What The World’s Most Successful Websites Have In Common
In today’s digital age, a website can make or break your business. It serves as a virtual storefront, a sales rep, a customer service agent, an educator and a marketing tool. But what are the essential features that all successful websites have in common? In this blog post, we delve into the most critical elements that contribute to a website’s success.
Zero2Webmaster Founder Dr. Kerry Kriger created the futuristic office art on this page in Midjourney.
User-Friendly Navigation
The first crucial feature is user-friendly navigation. A site should be easy to navigate, with menus (and possibly submenus) that are intuitive and straightforward. The structure of your website should be organized in a way that makes sense to your users. Think about the path that they’ll likely take and make sure that important information is never more than a few clicks away. Always provide links to relevant content, and be sure that links to external sites open in new tabs (so your website remains open).
Rather than having mega-menus with tons of submenus, consider having a link in your menu that leads to a page with all the relevant links (for example the SAVE THE FROGS! Support page, which links out to at least 12 ways to support the organization).
High-Quality Content
Content is king on the web. High-quality content not only draws in users but also keeps them on your site longer. It should be informative, engaging, and relevant to your audience’s needs and interests. Regularly adding and updating your content can keep your audience coming back, and will improve your search engine rankings. And after you spend time creating great content, be sure to link to it from elsewhere on your site, and share it to your mailing list and across your social channels.
WordPress originated as a blogging platform, and any quality WordPress theme should make it very easy to display your recent blog posts just like this.
Every Zero2Webmaster SuperSite comes pre-configured with:
(1) A blog page that will automatically display your newest posts; and
(2) The ability to easily display posts, pages, lessons, courses, products and custom post types via pre-built templates (such as the More Articles You May Enjoy section at the bottom of this post).
We like to write our content in Notion, then add them via copy/paste into the WordPress editor. That makes writing easy, and ensures you have a backup.
Mobile-Friendly, Responsive Design
With the rise of mobile usage, a successful website also needs to have a responsive design. This means that it should look and function well on a variety of devices, including desktops, tablets, and smartphones. Most people use their mobile devices to access the internet, so ensuring your website is mobile-friendly is no longer optional – it’s a necessity. The best page building systems, like Kadence Blocks, make optimizing for different devices easy.
The hundreds of beautiful templates that we provide our Zero2Webmaster SuperSite users come mobile-optimized from the outset, so that they rarely even need to think about responsive design.
Hint: in Chrome, you can right-click -> Inspect a page and choose the mobile icon responsive setting to easily see what your page will look like on tablet and mobile devices.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
To reach your target audience, your website should be optimized for search engines. SEO is an essential part of making your website more visible to your target audience, and fortunately, just implementing the fundamentals will go a long way to ensuring your pages are found and rank high search engine results pages. Here are the main things to keep in mind:
We recommend RankMath SEO (included and pre-configured on every Zero2Webmaster SuperSite) to assist with SEO on WordPress websites.
Rather than spending lots of money on ads, keep the above SEO principles in mind while building your site. You will get a lot more organic (i.e. free!) traffic from Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Baidu, Yandex, and from AI question/answer software like Perplexity AI.
The image above is a screenshot of how we used RankMath SEO to ensure that Google displays the search results of this article in an eye-catching and click-worthy way.
Clear Calls to Action
A successful website should guide users towards a specific action, whether it’s making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or filling out a contact form. Clear and compelling calls to action can significantly increase your conversion rates. Each page on your website should lead your visitors towards a specific action that aligns with your business goals. Calls to action could be Buy Now, Sign Up For Our Newsletter, Register For The Webinar, Schedule A Meeting, Download The E-Book, Become A Member, Apply Now, etc…
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Fast Loading Time
In our fast-paced world, users won’t wait around for a slow-loading website. Ensure that your site loads quickly to provide a smooth user experience and to boost your search engine rankings. This can be achieved through optimizing your images; using a quality hosting provider (we recommend and use Cloudways and Rocket.net); and minimizing the use of heavy scripts and unnecessary plugins.
Be sure to check out GTMetrix to test your site’s loading time.
Secure and Trustworthy
Your website should be secure and trustworthy. This includes having an SSL (secure sockets layer) certificate, and displaying trust badges to assure users that their data is safe – especially on payment pages.
Under newsletter signup forms, mention that your company respects users’ privacy and never rents or sells confidential information; and that they can easily unsubscribe anytime.
Sprinkle testimonials around your site so website visitors hear what others have to say about your business (further down this page, you will see lots of ideas on how to collect testimonials).
Check your site on a few different browsers once it goes live, to ensure it uses an https:// URL and that there is no ugly red security warning from Google.
Every Zero2Webmaster SuperSite comes with Cloudflare security software to fend off hackers, and Cloudflare Turnstile captcha to prevent forms from being spammed. If you can’t afford Cloudflare, or simply want a solution that is easier to configure, we recommend Wordfence.
Aesthetics
The visual appearance of your website plays a significant role in its success. An aesthetically pleasing design can attract and retain users, contributing to a positive user experience. The layout, color scheme, typography, and imagery should be consistent and match your brand identity. At the same time, the design should not overshadow the content or make it difficult for users to find the information they need. A clean, modern design can help your site stand out; build trust; increase recognition; and keep users coming back.
Every Zero2Webmaster SuperSite comes with one-click access to hundreds of pre-designed templates, as well as Kadence Theme and Kadence Blocks, which will allow you to be as artistic as you wish while designing your website.
WordPress sites have easy access to Pexels free stock images. If you want to reduce the chances your stock images are used regularly elsewhere, go with a paid service like Envato Elements. Or create your own art in AI software like Midjourney or Adobe Firefly! We used Midjourney to create the art on this page.
Accessibility
Accessibility is another critical feature of a successful website. It ensures that your website can be used by all people, including those with disabilities. This includes providing alt-text for images, using sufficient color contrast, and making sure your site can be navigated using a keyboard. An accessible website not only meets legal requirements but also expands your audience by making your website usable by more people. Tools like the Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool (WAVE) can help you evaluate and improve your site’s accessibility.
Conclusion
In conclusion, your website should be user-friendly, responsive, content-rich, SEO-optimized, action-oriented, fast, secure, aesthetically-pleasing and accessible. By incorporating these features, you will have a website that not only attracts visitors but also turns them into customers. Stay tuned to the Zero2Webmaster blog for more tips and strategies on how to build and optimize your website, and if you want to start out way ahead of your competition, get a Zero2Webmaster SuperSite, which we have created to provide you with an amazing and highly-optimized website experience.
BONUS:
More Ways To Improve Your Website
About Page That Tells Your Brand’s Story And Builds Trust
An About Page is another crucial feature of a successful website. People want to know who they are doing business with. A well-crafted About Page can make your brand more relatable and trustworthy, leading to increased customer loyalty and engagement. The About Page is where you tell your brand story and convey who you are as a business. It’s your chance to make a personal connection with your audience and build trust. When writing your About Page, be authentic and personal. Share your mission, values, and the story behind your brand. Include photos and bios of your team members, or at a minimum provide a statement from the founder. We include a pre-built About Page with every Zero2Webmaster SuperSite, to make your life that much easier when building your new site.
Testimonials
Testimonials are a powerful tool for building trust and credibility. They provide social proof and can significantly influence the decision-making process of potential customers. Real, honest reviews from satisfied customers can often be more convincing than your best sales pitch.
To source testimonials, consider reaching out to your customers and asking them to share their experiences, ideally as an automated followup email soon after their order is received or service delivered (we include FluentCRM with every Zero2Webmaster SuperSite, as it can easily send such emails). If you solve someone’s problem during an online meeting and they are clearly please, tell them you’d love it if they could send you a paragraph testimonial.
You can incentivize customers to leave a review by offering a discount or a free educational resource, but it shouldn’t be necessary if you are delivering a great product. Instead, just read your emails…when happy customers write you expressing their satisfaction, copy the contents of their email (edit it if needed) and add it to an Airtable database whose sole purpose is to store and organize testimonials, so that you always have a library of testimonials waiting to be added whenever you create a new webpage.
Another great way to get a constant stream of testimonials is to allow people to add comments on form submissions. We get great results with “What’s your favorite thing about [ORGANIZATION NAME]?” and “Anything else you’d like us to know?”. Need some great form software that integrates well with both FluentCRM and Airtable? We recommend Fluent Forms, and include it with every Zero2Webmaster SuperSite.
Once you’ve gathered testimonials, showcase them prominently on your website, either on a dedicated testimonials page, or by sprinkling them throughout your site, such as on product pages, the homepage, and even the checkout page. Remember, the key to effective testimonials is authenticity, so always use real reviews and include the name and photo of the customer (with their permission, of course) if possible.
Best of luck with your website! Feel free to contact us with any questions.
