9 Website Must Haves That Your Website Needs

I work with small and medium sized companies to help them attract more sales leads.  One of the starting points that we look at is a company’s website.

Often times, companies miss adding items to their website that will facilitate attracting sales leads, so I thought I would share 9 Website Must Have’s that every website should have.

Here are 9 website must haves that you should have on your website:

1. Social Share Widget – Did you know that only 34% of websites have a social share widget on them?  Adding a social share widget on your site will allow website visitors to help you spread the word through their networks. This is the ultimate viral marketing tool. Look at adding a social share widget on your website like Add This or Shareaholic.
2. Live Chat Widget – When people visit your website, they may like what you have to offer, but may have questions. Why not add a live chat widget to your website so that people can ask their questions?  This will help you potentially get new clients. Most Live Chat widgets will have an offline mode that allows you to capture questions so that you can get back to a potential client.  One of my favorites is Zopim, but there are others out there.
3. Email Capture Form – Email marketing is a great way to generate sales.  Sign up for a service like AWeber, Constant Contact, or one of my favorites, LeadLife and start building a list of people that you can market to.
4. Video – It is said that video is remembered 8 times better than written information and 4 times better than audio.  Video should be a part of everyone’s marketing mix.  Consider putting up videos on your different pages to tell a story, show off your product or for just about anything you can think of.
5. Multiple Ways to Contact You – Do you only have 1 or 2 ways for people to reach you?  You should have numerous ways so that you increase the likelihood of being contacted.  Try a contact form, text messaging, live chat, email, phone number, cell number, or any way that you can think of.   Make sure that you add contact information to every page on your site so that if someone finds something that they like, they can contact you.
6. Google Analytics – Do you know how many people come to your website?  Or even where they come from?  Google Analytics is an amazing tool that can help you with this and it’s free.  Google Analytics will tell you about numerous aspects of your website, such as where people are coming from, if they are engaging on your site and other things.  As they say in marketing, you can’t measure what you don’t know.  Google Analytics will help you measure the unknown.
7. A Call to Action – You can lead a horse to water but you can not get it to drink.  Your website is part of your marketing, and your marketing should be designed to generate sales leads.  As such, you need to tell visitors to your website what you want them to do. This is done through a strong call to action and you should have calls to action on most if not all of your web pages. One great idea is to have buttons that tell the visitor to do something, like “Click Here – For More Information” or “Buy Now”.
8. Testimonials – People believe what other people have to say about you, your products and services.  Make sure that you add testimonials to your website.  A testimonial should be from someone who is real and who has used your product or service.  one of the best forms of testimonials is in the form of a video testimonial.
9. Comments – This is especially true for any website that has a blog.  A lot of websites made with common platforms like WordPress and Joomla will probably have the comments functionality built in. You could also look at Disqus.

I hope that these website must haves will help you.

I realize that there are a lot more than the 9 I listed above.  Feel free to add any additional items that you think could benefit others in the comments section.

Must Have Photo via Shutterstock