41 Must-have features on your business website

Building a website is an iterative process. In order to get the satisfactory big picture, businesses must focus on all the little details. This is especially true when it comes to the features one must have on their website. With the correct set of features available on your website, you can create the magical portal of conversion on the internet.

A good website has a well-organised structure. It has a professional look and feel to it across all types of devices. Websites which perform well garner fruitful results and contribute to the growth of the organisation. Therefore, businesses should weigh the importance of every feature, colour and word that ends up on the website.

We have compiled an exhaustive list of website features that businesses can refer to while building their website.

The basics for website hygiene:

Good website hygiene includes proactive choices businesses make to ensure the smooth functioning of their website.

Domain name - Your website’s domain name is the name people type in the search bar everytime they wish to visit it. Domain names should be easy to remember and should correspond with your business name. It is also advisable to have commonly used domain suffixes like .com, .org, .net or even .in, depending on your target audience’s nationality.
URLs - Uniform Resource Locators are link addresses that visitors have to type to directly arrive at your website or a page from your website. Business websites need to have easy to remember and readable URLs in order to be reachable by searchers.
Internal links - There’s more to a website than a home page. Internal links redirect people to the other parts of your business and provide them with a deeper insight into your key offerings and operations. Having internal links to blogs, services, etc. can enhance your visitor’s website experience and eventually lead them to convert.
Loading speed - Ideally, your business website should load within 3 seconds or less after clicking the URL. This narrow time window of seconds dictates if a searcher becomes a visitor or hits back before the website gets loaded. In fact, 40% of consumers will wait no longer than 3 seconds before abandoning your site.
Mobile-friendliness - Mobile-friendly websites make it easy for users to access, read, and navigate your site on mobile devices. As the number of smartphone users has gone up exponentially over the years, the demographic of website visitors is largely made up of mobile users. This is why having a mobile-friendly site becomes lucrative.

Design

Designs are the first visual impression of your business website. Through visuals, you inform visitors about your business and incite curiosity in them. Therefore, it’s important to put a lot of thought into your website’s design and theme.

Logo - Logo is synonymous with a business’s identity. Many people may read your business name or even go through the contents of your website. However, seeing how the average person’s attention span has been on the decline due to the bombardment of advertisements on the internet, the chances of them forgetting about your business are higher. By displaying your business logo on the top of your home page, visitors are more likely to have a successful memory recall.
Images - Website banners and images are useful for captivating attention and creating a content divide. Images also create a good memory recall and establish the look and feel of your brand.
Website theme - Following a uniformed colour scheme and a font style is essential to make a website appear professional. There are several website theme templates available online. Businesses can take inspiration from these samples or create a website theme from scratch.

Cornerstone features:

Some website features are non-negotiable. Brands must include the following features in order to provide their potential customers with the best user experience:

Navigation bar - In simple words, a navigation bar is a menu to your website. Every good website should have an accessible navigation bar on the top or the side of the home page. A navigation bar also tells visitors what more they can explore on your site and find their desired products or information.
Search bar - Having a search bar enables users to find what they are looking for on your website without getting discouraged in the search process. Businesses can ease the search process for their customers by including a search bar in the navigation bar itself.
Description - A short description or a company tagline right beside the logo helps first-time visitors understand what your business is all about. Including a one-liner description about your business and your work also helps create a brand recall for existing customers.
Tabs and options - Tabs and options at the very bottom of every page gives visitors more options to explore your website. By inserting a hyperlinked list of services, products or information your target audience might be interested in, you give them easy answers to their queries. For instance, you can add your business location, blog, press stories, and an about us page link.
Blog - Blogs are the best way to prove your standing in the industry as a thought leader. By giving more content to engage your readers, you retain their attention for a longer period of time and build credibility for your business. In the era of content creation, investing in a blog feature on your website is highly lucrative.
CTAs - Call To Actions are any actionals steps that encourage viewers to do an action in favour of your business’s growth. Right from ‘join today’ to ‘contact us’, businesses can insert any relevant CTA on their website to increase conversion rates.
Social media icons - Maintaining a virtual presence on social media platforms is crucial for brands to get noticed by their target audience. Redirecting your visitors to your social media handles can be a great way of increasing your follower count and building a loyal customer. Businesses must include hyperlinks to their social media handles the footer of their website or in the contact page.
Contact info - Displaying your business’s phone number and email address helps visitors get in touch with you directly. This way, anyone who wants to connect for queries or proposals can do so quickly.
Contact form - Through a contact form, businesses can also create a database of potential customers and gather information about their common queries. Adding a contact form with options to fill personal details and send messages can be a game changer while studying the behaviour of your target audience.
Map/location - Address and location leads a viewer to your store or office directly. Many people are comfortable with purchasing and doing business in person. Ultimately, websites must serve the purpose of attracting potential consumers to your business. Showcasing your business address and map location on your website serves as an indirect invitation for interested people to visit.
Business hours - By informing your viewers about your business timings, you can give them a cue about your availability. This can help them learn the best time to reach out to you for queries or business proposals.
Relevant content - Even after having all the relevant features, your website may not do the job of communicating about your business effectively. Using the correct set of words to communicate your strengths, offerings and more is important to get the correct message across.

Product and services features:

Product and services are the most important on any business website. This is where you want our visitors to pay the most attention.

Product & service descriptions - Product and service descriptions are the copies that garner sales for you. Including product and service descriptions gives potential customers an idea of what you can help them with.
Testimonials - Testimonials on your website can not only help potential customers understand how your products or services work, but they can also act as indirect word-of-mouth marketing. Encourage customers and clients to write reviews about your products and services.
Case studies - Unlike testimonials, case studies are more detailed and are backed by data. Case studies are unbiased and can build credibility by showcasing your business’s previous record.
Payment gateways - For e-commerce business websites, having payment gateways is a must. Ensure that the payment gateway feature you use on your website is secured and trusted.
Documents and guides - Every brand has set guides and processes, and being transparent about it is beneficial for customers. Businesses should consider making customer-facing documentation and make it available on their website.
FAQs - Frequently asked questions are pages that help visitors get direct answers to questions that have been asked before. This reduces your team’s need to resolve the same query or concern over and over again. This also inconveniences visitors way less by reducing the effort needed to send queries.
Q&As - Q&A forums on websites encourage customers to connect with each other and discuss. Instead of having a company representative present to answer all the queries, giving existing customers a chance to discuss lays the foundation for a community to build around your brand.

Extra features:

Apart from the aforementioned features, having these extra features can enhance the website experience for your viewers:

Teams - Employee pages humanise your business. By displaying the employee headshots of your departments, right from marketing to finance, you introduce the ambassadors of your business to your visitors.
Careers - Having a careers page comes handy in attracting job seekers to your business. You can add the designations, key responsibilities and other relevant details for people to learn about the vacancies available at your organisation. You can even display the HR manager’s email ID on this page to make it easy for job seekers to reach out to you.
Employee bios - Employee bios are an effective way of showing that you value the voice of your employees and are open to diversity of thoughts, backgrounds and interests.
Media - A lot of businesses include a video to their team or the work they do on their website. This can also include the entire production process or the work operations that go into completing a project. This also serves as a great marketing collateral for when your company goes on a hiring spree.
Infographics - Infographics condense big chunks of information and data in small easy to understand bits and visuals. If your business has any infographics, making it available to your visitors on your website is recommended.
Author pages - Author pages are a great way of showing the expertise of your writers. Readers often wish to know more about the writer of your website’s blogs when the writing style ends up leaving a lasting impact on them. Author pages create familiarity and can give your readers a reason to keep visiting the site to find out more.
Blog search function - At times, having a blog search function can be the best if there are many blogs available on your site. This cuts down the effort needed by a reader to find the blog post they are interested in.
Comments - Including a comments section on your blog page can be a great way to encourage readers to engage with your content proactively. Comments also serve as valuable feedback for your blog writers.
Live chat - With the rise in demand for AI chatbots, businesses have begun investing heavily in chatbot features on their website. Incorporating live chats on your site also adds to your customer service experience.
Subscriber opt-in - To provide continuous value to your consumers and to keep in touch with them, businesses can have a newsletter or subscriber opt-in feature available on their website.

Back-end features:

Back-end features are all the behind the scenes features that go into play to make your website presentable to consumers. Here are the 5 essential ones:

CMS tool - A Content Management System helps organise and retain all the content on your website. Even after taking down a post or a feature, you can save it on the CMS tool. Wordpress, Joomla and Drupal are some of the most famous CMS tools.
Site analytics - Site analytics tools help you understand the visitors demographics of your site. This can give you valuable insights into what you can change or keep as it is in order to attract the correct audience.
Website hosting - Websites cannot function without a host. Website builders usually have hosting available, but you won't need to worry about a web hosting provider as your site is probably hosted through them. In case your website is being built from scratch, you will need to externalise your hosting.
SEO tool - SEO tools and plugins help you understand where your website ranks on search engines result pages. This also gives you valuable input into improving your ranking by providing suggestions.
Content description - Another way to improve ranking is by strategically writing content for your meta descriptions, meta titles, headers, etc.

There is definitely more to add and explore, but if your business website has most of the features mentioned above, you can be rest-assured that you are on the right track. If you wish to add these features to your website, but need the technical support to bring your dreams to fruition reach out to us and our web developers will walk you through the process.