7-minute read
As newer and more effective tools are created for website design and development, the barriers to have a digital presence have never been lower. That's why it's important to stay on top of the latest marketing and web development trends.
If you don’t, you may be missing out on website visitors, a lower CTR and reduced conversion rates for no reason. Lets break down some of the key elements a successful website should have in 2020.
Fast Loading Speed
It can't be overstated how important it is that your site loads quickly. Prospects are steadily becoming less and less patient with load times as the years go by due to the continuous improvement in internet speeds. Therefore, if your site loads so slowly that it seems like something from the Dark Ages, very few people are going to stay long enough to be engaged or come back for a repeat visit.
The problem here is that many companies are under the impression that their website has a perfectly average loading speed when in fact it is quite slower than what it should be. In fact, the current average webpage loading speed is approximately 4.7 seconds on a desktop. While this might seem fine to some people, it is actually significantly slower than the recommended loading speed in 2020.
Once you start taking more than three seconds to load a webpage, more than a third of visitors are likely to get frustrated and exit your website. Therefore, even if you are at the average loading speed of 4.7 seconds, you are still almost two seconds slower than what you need to be at. That is why you need to make sure that you are doing everything you can in order to ensure that your website has very fast loading speeds and try to reach the goal of being under three seconds.
Plus, this is not even addressing the fact that the average loading speed for mobile versions of websites is an abysmal 11.4 seconds. At this point, the odds of someone abandoning the website increase by over 125 percent.
Customer/Client Reviews
You can do all of the marketing that you want, and we highly recommend that you do, but the fact is that there is nothing more effective than word of mouth. This is a classic strategy that has stood the test of time because of just how impactful it is for people to hear good things about a company from other people they know and respect. That is why you need to make sure that you are capitalizing on word of mouth opportunities as much as possible.
One of the best ways to do this is to make sure to include reviews from past customers or clients on your website. They should ideally be placed on the homepage as well as at least one other section of the site in order to make sure that everyone who visits your site is exposed to them at least once.
Some websites like to put two or three reviews from some of their clients near the bottom of the homepage and then consider it a job well done. However, this is nowhere near enough reviews in order to make a real difference. In fact, it is estimated that a website will need at least 40 reviews available on their website before consumers begin to have more faith in a company’s products or services.
Therefore, what you can and should be doing is creating an interactive section on the web page where a visitor can look through a number of reviews and then easily click on one in order to be brought to a different page where all of the reviews will be available. This will allow you to put over 40 reviews on your website and get the positive results from this without inadvertently overwhelming your visitors with the sheer amount of reviews splattered across your homepage.
A User-Friendly Mobile Version of the Site
Even though we only briefly mentioned mobile versions of websites earlier, they are actually a massive part of internet searches nowadays. In fact, there are approximately 211 million people in the U.S. who conduct searches on their mobile phones. Therefore, if you do not have a mobile-friendly version of your site, then you are alienating almost a third of the entire country’s population.
Unfortunately, a lot of businesses are still treating mobile versions of their websites as a secondary thing that is largely optional. Therefore, when someone tries to use their website on a phone, it creates a situation where menus are all messed up, pictures are improperly formatted, and the overall user experience is significantly worse. Instead, you need to make sure that you are treating the mobile-friendly version of your site as a priority or at least an equal to the desktop version of the site.
Plenty of Backlinks
Everyone knows that search engine optimization (SEO) is something that can turn a good website into a great website. But what they may not know is how important backlinks are to achieving proper SEO. When you can get other websites to link to your site, it makes your own content so much more powerful.
Luckily, there are many different tactics that you can use in order to try and get more backlinks. Therefore, it doesn't really matter which method you end up using, as long as it is working to steadily get more backlinks.
Once you have achieved numerous backlinks going to various pages on your website, you will begin to rank higher on search engine results and consequently get more traffic. Plus, this is not something that you have to regularly pay for like with Google ads. It is instead organic traffic, which is much more effective and has long-term effects.
By integrating these elements into your website, you have a much better chance of increasing your views and conversions.
