42 Features of a professional Website

42 Features of a professional Website – it is important for every business/organization to have a brand website. It is one of the little extra spices that you can add to your business in the twenty-first century, to help you achieve your desired goals and objectives. Having a website gives you extra leverage to reach more customers than your competitors. A professionally designed website should help you reach more people, make more sales, target a potential new market, right in the comfort of their bedrooms or offices.  In addition, it is your online office that never shuts down. Your website operates twenty hours a day, seven days a week and three hundred and sixty-five days a year.

As a professional digital marketing and web design company in Nigeria, based on experience, research and best web practices among top website designers across the world. We have come up with a list of the top features every website must have, this research is as a result of proven track records and many years of research in website design and online branding in Nigeria. This is also to educate would be website owners to know what they should look out for when designing a website.

Most times, business owners and even some website designers have little or no idea of the best website design practices, therefore they design websites that cannot rank on search engines or stand the test of time.

When designing a site, it is important for the website designer or the website design company to customize the site based on the client’s needs, market or business needs and functionalities that are needed.

Here are the features of a professional website must have.

Features of a professional Website

Header Information for websites

1. Domain Name: This is one of the most important parts of a business website, this is the web address of the website. It should either represent the name of your company or what your company stands for. It should be simple, easy to remember, avoid long domain names, and make it simple. For example www.brandlersolutions.com, www.konga.com , www.jumia.com.ng etc. A good domain name is a great feature of a professional website.
2. SSL Security: This is the padlock sign that you often see on the left-hand side of the address bar of browsers. This basically helps secure your site and ensure that user information is protected when they are surfing or browsing through your website. It basically helps create a secure connection on the site.
3. Logo: This is your brand identity; it is usually placed on the top of the header. Logos give your brand a great sense of brand identity and also help build trust and branding.
4. Phone Number: This is very crucial because most of the time when a user comes across your website, the first thing they want to do if they are interested in your products or services is to call. Make sure the phone is visible on the pages of your website.
5. Menu: This is the main navigation of your website, it makes navigating around the website fast and easy, It is like the website navigational map that leads you from one page of the website to the other pages of the site. That is, the Homepage, About Us, Contact Us, Services etc
6. Banner / Slider: Your website should contain a slider or banner displaying what your organization does; this will be the first thing that catches your visitor’s attention when they visit your website. It should be simple, self-explanatory, catchy and above all captivating.
7. Call to Action (CTA): This is one of the most important features of a professional website that is often neglected. This is the sales part of your website; after you have told your customers what your business does, don’t just assume the visitors understand what next to do. You need a call to action button which tells your customers the next line of action you want them to take. EG, Contact Us, Buy Now! Call Us, Get a free Quote etc
8. Heading/Tagline: You should include the name or important heading and tagline for your business with keywords relating to what you do, this is good for SEO and will ultimately help you in ranking higher in search engines. The tagline is a catchy phrase that helps convey what you do to your customers. For example, at Brandler Solutions our tagline is Digital creative and innovative solution provider.
9. Products / Services: You need to give a general overview or graphical representation of your services, or top selling products summarized on the front page. This is to help the visitors make a swift decision rather than having to navigate all the pages of your site.
10. Quality and Optimized Contents: When it comes to online business, you must understand that content is king. For your website to rank high on search engines you must have high-quality content.
11. Catchy Images: Like the popular saying, Pictures speaks a thousand words, another way to impress your visitors is to have catchy and beautiful images of the products or services rendered, displayed on your site. Beautiful and clear pictures have a great psychological effect on users, which ultimately make them patronize you. Having great images on your website is also a neccesary feature of a professional wensite.
12. Testimonials/Reviews: Depending on your business type, another way to convince your visitors is to add testimonials from past clients to your site. Customers want to be sure that you can offer what you claim to be offering, So testimonials or reviews from past clients will go a long way to attract other buyers.
13. Lists of Clientele: Show a list of your past and present clients. This gives your business some form of trust especially if you have worked with some top brands or have a lot of clients.
14. Portfolio: This is another great feature of a professional website; it’s a place that allows you to blow your own trumpet. This feature is like your showroom where you let your website do the talking for you. It lets you showcase your past works and project. Visitors can easily flip through these projects before making the final decision.
15. Contact Information: One of the greatest harm you can do to your business is to not have your contact information on your website; you should also give your customers different options to reach you. Your contact information should contain your physical address or website address, your phone number, your email address, social media contact and working hours.
16. Newsletter Signup: This is one way of building relationship with your clients and website visitors, a lot of customers come to your website every day, you should encourage them to subscribe to your website newsletter where you can send offers, updates, promotions, discounts or new products/services that you are offering. This way you can always keep in touch with them for life.
17. Footer Menu: This is an important feature of a professional site which helps for easy site navigation. To enable the customer to quickly go to any page instead of having to scroll to the top menu to navigate to other pages.
18. Social Media Links: Because we live in a social world, many of your customers want to follow you on social media to keep up with updates in your business, it is often advisable to include your social media links on your website.

ABOUT PAGE

19. About Your Organisation: This should contain important information about your brands and what you stand for.
20. Mission and Vision: This should feature the mission and vision of your organization.
21. Achievements Infographics/ Awards: you can give a pictorial representation of your achievements in the business like years in the business, number of completed projects, awards etc

SERVICE PAGE

22. Service Summary: This feature gives an overview of all the services your organization renders at a glance.
23. Service offering: This explains in details what your organization offers in more detail.
24. Links to other pages on your site: This is good for easy navigation and SEO (search engine optimization)
25. Readable Link: The link to every page of your site should carry the keywords of that particular service you are offering. Make sure you have readable URL or links on your websites, this is great for SEO. Instead of using www.brandlersolutions.com/12434jsgyusik as a link, use something like www.brandlersolutions.com/services

CONTACT PAGE

26. Greetings: Be courteous in your manner of approach, don’t just be a salesman. Your customers are king and therefore should be treated as one. Don’t just go into telling them to send you a message, use words such as Please, Kindly etc. Add you should add a thank you message with a note that you will respond to their messages shortly, this makes your customer feel that you value that time.
27. Business contact information: It’s very important to add your office location, address, phone number contact information etc.
28. Contact form: Add a form to your contact page where customers can easily send a message at the click of a button.
29. Business Hours: This is crucial in the sense that, you want to let the customers know you opening and closing time.
30. Anti spam: You need to have an anti-spam feature to avoid getting unnecessary or unwarranted messages.
31. Map: You can decide to also add a map to your site for easy navigation.

OTHER PAGES

32. Privacy policy: This is very important people need to understand that their information is safe.
33. FAQ: This will solve a lot of issues by providing answers to some of the most frequently asked questions.
34. Service page: This page shows a list of all the services you render.

GALLERY / PORTFOLIO

35. Portfolio: This should display a list of your present and past works; these would give customers an overview of your level of competence and will make it easy for them to make decisions.

BLOG / UPDATES
36. Blog Posts

37. Sidebar: This is usually on the left or the right side of the blog which often contain the site category, the recent posts, authors information, tags etc
38. Blog Categories: This should be on the sidebar to make it easy for readers to navigate to different categories easily.
39. Search : This is one of the most important features of any professional website/blog. The makes it easy for reader to quickly search for content, rather than going from page to page to find it.
40. Social media Share buttons: This feature makes it easy for someone to easily share your content on social media at the click of a button.
41. Comment feature: Because most websites are usually a one-way conversation, that is, you are the one communicating with your readers, it makes it less interactive and engaging, but with the comment feature on your website blog, readers can easily drop comments, ask questions or share their thoughts.

Search Engine Optimsation (SEO)

42. SEO (Search Engine Optimisation): A website without a great SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is like a beautiful house somewhere in a thick forest that cannot be located. The house exists but can’t be found. This is exactly what happens when your website is not optimized. Always make sure you get a good SEO company to handle your website. Some of the things you need to get right are the url, the titles, keywords relating to your business, good content, images with alt tags etc

These are the standard features of a professional website .