Important 10 Features of a Good Business Website

We know everybody it’s crucial to have a small business website and it’s an important asset for your company to compete with your competitor in marketplace. Your website represents your business strength and popularity in market. The success of your small business depends on your good website today.

Here are 10 Features that optimize your site to gather traffic to your site:
 

1. Clearly Visible Contact Information
Make sure your targeted visitor easily get your contact information and business location. Also build a page for all contact information and location that provides all of your important contact information, including phone number, email address, location with a map, and hours of operation. Then add a contact us button at the top to your small business website and add to footer also, and this contact us button will remain with all pages to your website.

At the end all of your contents add a link to Call today to set up your free consultation (for example), directing them to a contact form or directly to your email or phone.

2. Balanced and Accurate Content
Without good and unique content, your website is nothing. Always write the unique and accurate contents for your website. Many business owner people think that more content will do as long as it fills up their WebPages and its looks nice. The fact is nothing could be further from the truth. Your website should needs to be filled with actual information that people will find helpful so that they will convert into your business customers. Also, make sure that your consumers don’t collect wrong information about your business. Don’t copy and post others content to your website, use a program like Copyscape to check all of your content to make sure there is nothing copied.

Important one thing Your WebPages information’s should be easy to read and understand.

3. Calls to Action
Always make sure about add Call to Action for easy communication with your website visitor. A Call to Action should have in several pages and places in your website, both before the bottom and fold of homepage. It’s important to add your phone number and a hyperlink to your contact us page as a highlighted box. Make a website with attractive Call to Action.
When you put an email address or a phone number on the site, don’t upload this information as an image — the number or address should be able to be clicked on or copied right from the site in order to place the call or send an email conveniently and quickly. Nowadays most smart phones these days have the ability to do "Click to Call" options on the web, so make the process as easy as possible for users.

4. Mobile-Friendly Experience
At the end of 2012, nearly a quarter of Web traffic was from mobile and other smart devices. People will be looking at your website on their Personal computers, laptops, smartphones, and tablets. In this situation you must design your website with mobile and other smart device optimized. Most of the small business company making their websites as mobile responsive. It is important that your website is mobile-friendly or device responsive. There are two ways to do this. One is to create another website that would have a URL same to your website such as m.yourwebsite.com. These sites are created just for mobile devices and require a separate website, URL, host, domain, etc.

The most important thing, that is to make sure that your site is mobile friendly or device responsive because Google is now giving preference in ranking to sites that are device responsive.

5. Search Engine Optimization
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the most important thing for your website; SEO will help you to appear your website on top position search engine tools like google.com, yahoo.com, bing.com. Search engines have two main functions: crawling and indexing sites, and search engine providing a ranked list of websites based on their relevance to the search term and keywords. You can use Google webmaster tools to manage your SEO tools and research on your website visitors.

Note: Google is the most uses search engine tool, Support for International search engines including market leaders such as Baidu, Rambler, Yandex, AUM and Naver are critical path for a successful SEO program at an enterprise level.

6. User-Friendly Functionality
You have to know that, most of the users are not familiar with website and its functionality they don’t know too much. You have to make your website very easy and user friendly functionality. How long does it take for your page to load? It’s also an important thing to consider, people never wait for a long time if your takes long during loading time. Are all the links working and not broken? Is the formatting of your site up to date? Make sure that your all links is properly working or not, always up to date your site.

Using flash is may detract from your site’s effectiveness. Flash is not SEO friendly and takes long time to load it makes slow your website. Most of the smartphones does not support flash display, so by using it, you may be alienating some of your mobile visitors.

7. Social Media Integration
Social media is the most visited sites today; your business must have social media awareness. Social media is massive in today’s connected business environment. Consumers expect to be able to communicate with businesses through social like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn and more. Social media is an excellent way to reach your customers to learn more about you, connect with other fans, and get the information they need in order to decide to do business with you. If you observe social media as a serious and productive marketing tool for your business and you factor in time in your work week to connect with people through social media channels, the presence of social media buttons on your site is an absolute must have.

You’ll want to make sure your social media buttons are visible on every page of your website, so factor in how big or small the icons should be and their location.

8. Blog
Blog is the most strategic business communication tool for small business website that can help you to reach your potential clients and consumers. It establishes you as a subject-matter expert that can provide free valuable content to your customers, building your fan base of followers/readers. It will help you bring more traffic to your small business website and possibly convert those visitors into buyers.

9. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Your visitors have lots of questions. They will contact with you via email or phone to know about their questions, if you answer all potential question on FAQ page then they will understand clearly. Questions often revolve around materials and ingredients used, shipping information, company history, sizing (for apparel brands) and cancellation or return policies etc. FAQ sections serve multiple purposes. First, it’s a demonstration that people are using your site regularly, which increases your visible authority. Second, if your users are even slightly interested in your business, they have an easy place to find volumes of common information.

10. Subscription Invitations
Something to hold in thoughts while you build a small business commercial enterprise website is that a newsletter is a fantastic way of producing repeat enterprise for a small enterprise, tell your clients about upcoming promotions, gives and new services. Sending out a newsletter allows you to present yourself as a professional in your industry whilst offering your customers with precious information. The frequency of your publication will depend of the amount of content you may create. News letters may be sent out daily, weekly, bi-weekly or maybe monthly. Newsletters assist set up steady verbal exchange between you and your customers, additionally on-line publication signups give you the opportunity to construct an opt-in email list.

Shared from webtady.com

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17 web design trends for 2017

Discover what's shaping the world of web design today — and tomorrow.

How we consume the web changes how we design websites. Mobile devices and the trend towards responsive design push designers to find ways to maximize web experiences for everyone, no matter what device(s) they’re using.

These 17 trends — 16 for this year, plus 1 for the future — respond directly to the evolving ways we move through the web.

1. Microinteractions

The walk signal button is just one of the many microinteractions we encounter daily.

From pressing an elevator button to liking a photo on Instagram, we all perform tons of single-action tasks every day, usually without much thought. We call these simple moments of engagement microinteractions.

Well-designed microinteractions can be defining because, despite their simplicity, they’re often very powerful. Pinning an inspirational photo, liking a witty status, and retweeting a powerful message have become so common we don’t even need to name the websites that birthed them.

When done right, microinteractions offer an intuitive way to interact with a website. When done wrong, they can cause frustration through unexpected functionality — or downright quirkiness.

As we designers streamline our web experiences, we’ll see — and create — more microinteractions to help us simplify the actions we need to take.

But how do you know your microinteractions provide the simplicity and power people want from them? Well, this cheatsheet from Dan Saffer, author of O’Reilly’s Microinteractions: Designing with Details, can help:

Pretty handy one-sheeter on microinteraction design, eh?

Download the PDF of the Microinteractions cheatsheet

2. Reliance on images over text

In a world where anyone can take a high-quality photo, it's no surprise imagery has come to dominate the web.

As web design evolves, the importance of high-quality images will only increase. Solid copy strengthens any website, but if it can be said with a photo, animation, or short video, it might be a really good idea to do so.

Written content remains invaluable for SEO purposes, but with every piece of content you add to your site, always ask yourself: is there a more engaging, concise, and shareable way of conveying this idea?

In general, text works best for removing the ambiguity that visual methods of communication are prone to.

It’s also worth remembering that it’s not always a question of “one or the other.” If you want to design and publish in an accessible way that prioritizes every user’s experience, you’ll want to pair visual and written content. That way, everyone can experience your content in the best way for them.

3. Designing with real data (i.e., content)

Designing with real data illuminates opportunities and edge cases.

Sure, mockups look pretty. But with their lush images and precise lorem ipsum text placements, they represent an idealized reality. Like the appliances in a model home, mockups are about as functional as a cardboard television.

Designing with real data gives us a deeper understanding of how a page will function. In part because it surfaces all the “problems” designers strive to avoid in their mockups, such as long headlines, low-quality images, etc.

Designing with real content gives both writers and designers better insight into what they need to do. If you haven’t yet, check out “Why your design process should start with content.” Webflow’s CMS helps you design functional prototypes with real content, giving both designers and writers a better idea of just how a website will function.

4. Scrooooooooooooooooolling

‍He loves sushi, movies, and long scrolls in the park.

With the multitude of screen sizes out there, the term “above the fold” has lost significance.

Once dismissed as bad design, the long scroll’s intuitive functionality on mobile devices has brought it widespread acceptance. It makes navigation easier, eliminating the extra clicks necessary to reveal content. Eye-catching transitions and differentiated section designs transform what could be a monotonous trudge into a delightful process of discovery.

Long scrolling changes UX design, opening the door for more narrative approaches and simpler interaction models.

Congrats. You reached the end.

5. Conversational/bot websites and apps

‍Olivia AI uses artificial intelligence to help people manage their finances.

Many science fiction writers have envisioned a future dystopia where humanity has fallen under the rule of robot overlords. But here in reality, artificial intelligence has actually been pretty helpful in the development of websites and apps. Sorry, Isaac Asimov.

Nobody wants to navigate a complex series of menus to get something done. Conversation makes for a much easier experience. Apps and other web services are using this more natural approach to make ordering goods, getting financial advice, or booking a hotel room as easy as sending a few text messages.

Plus, various tools have popped up to help non-coders make their own bots, so we’re likely to see tons more of these over the coming years.

One particularly interesting question arises from the ‘bots’ rise: how will the role of the web/UI/UX design transform as this new form of interface gains popularity? After all, in most cases, there’s already a well-built design wrapping the conversational experience. That means the words themselves become the core UI.

Which leads naturally to the question: will 2017 be the year of the “content designer”?

6. The death of the hamburger menu

‍Once sizzling, hamburger menus now get a lukewarm reception.

Hamburger menus are polarizing. Much like election-year politics, we don’t recommend discussing them after a few drinks in mixed company. Especially if said company includes UX designers.

Sure, hamburger menus save precious real estate on tiny screens.

But from a usability standpoint, hamburger menus have their problems. Few people even recognize the icon. And even those who do recognize it don’t know what to expect when the menu opens, given all the ways that interaction can unfold. They’re also inefficient, in that they add an extra step to the process of navigating a site.

Finally, they also conceal a site’s breadth, thereby voiding individual page’s context and place within the larger whole. With navigation visible on-screen, people can easily get the lay of the land and see their options. Without it, that big-picture orientation gets much harder.

Apps like Spotify have ditched their hamburger menus in favor of simplified navigation, and we expect we’ll see much more of that as the year continues.

7. Desktop push notifications

‍Push notifications don’t have to be mobile-only.

We’ve all experienced the power of push notifications. No matter where you are or what you’re doing, it’s so hard to ignore that little ding or buzz. So hard to not whip out your phone and engage with whoever’s pinging you.

And now, many websites are trying to bring that power to the desktop. If you haven’t seen it yet, this usually manifests as a little modal-like element sliding down from the top of the browser, asking you if the site can send you desktop notifications, a la Slack.

It makes perfect sense: after all, here you are on the site, ready to engage with it. Why hope you’ll sign up for the newsletter and then hope you’ll actually open it, when they can just hit you up right here and now?

That said, these modals always seem to fire as soon as the site loads, so it’s hard to say yes to such a premature, invasive request. (Much like your average newsletter popup.) Perhaps the next year will see this technique refined to be more effective and helpful.

8. Product explainer videos

These have been around for awhile, yes. But their importance will only grow in the coming years.

Clocking in at around 90 seconds, product explainer videos offer a quick, concise way to tout the virtues of a given product. With informative voiceovers and clever animations, product explainer videos can work for any-sized company in letting people know just why their products are great.

One thing brands will have to keep in mind when using such videos is their inaccessibility to some audiences if captions aren’t included. Plus, many people (including me, Ed.) simply refuse to watch videos on marketing sites, so you don’t want to lean on videos to explain everything.

What's cool in web design changes faster than you can say “Geocities." Check out these 17 web design trends for 2016.

9. Duotones

‍There’s beauty in the simplicity of duotones.

Duotone images are created by “printing” a grayscale image with a second, non-black color. The technique has its origins in printing and fits well within a minimalist web design aesthetic.

Duotone images make great hero backgrounds because they add some life without unduly distracting from the content, or creating legibility issues. A simple duotone color scheme can also be a great way to create a clean, consistent-looking page — particularly when you’re trying to present several very-different images in the same place (such as logos or team member headshots).  

10. Stylized typography

‍The Studio 96 template for Webflow pairs dramatically different font sizes to make a bold statement.

A minimalist design approach leaves room for more artistic uses of type. Extremes in sizing, custom typefaces, traditional fonts used in unconventional ways, and highly stylized lettering can all have a huge impact. And with the increased access to typographic choices Google Fonts and Adobe Typekit offer, there’s no need to stick with another ho-hum sans serif anymore.

Combining font sizes can have a huge impact on the look and organization of a page. Single words can take up an entire page. Using vastly different sized fonts creates hierarchy, which in turn supports people in their efforts to understand a website and find the content they want. Larger fonts emphasize the primary messaging of a page, while smaller ones naturally guide one's eyes to the supporting messaging. Designers are making more visually dynamic pages through their creative use of differing font sizes.

Proprietary typefaces have also gained a whole new prominence in our lives. Once the domain of brands’ wordmarks, print materials, and brand style guides, bespoke fonts have now taken key roles in interfaces we see every day. Apple’s own San Francisco typeface, Amazon Kindle’s Bookerly, Android’s Roboto, and even UPS’ sans font are all are great examples of the effect typography can have on a brand’s identity. It may be costly and time consuming to design an entire font family, but it can have a strong effect on differentiating your company.

Traditional fonts are being repurposed and used in more creative ways too. Text is showing up in the form of masks, where letters are cut out of an image, flipping the traditional text-overlay approach. We’re also seeing a resurgence in distressed, “vintage”-feeling fonts as brands embrace a DIY aesthetic to capture that all important “kale chip and craft beer” demographic.

It can be overkill to fill a page with flourish-rich fonts, but when used tastefully, this kind of typography can create a strong mood and bring life to a page.

On the other hand …

In stark contrast, we’re also seeing the beginning of a move back to system fonts for some major platforms, including GitHub. While custom fonts help create a dramatically more diverse and beautiful web, they can also negatively impact performance. Let’s just be thankful that today’s system fonts are a far cry from Arial and Helvetica.

11. Vibrant color schemes

As flat and minimalist design have gained popularity, bright colors have been on the rise too. As noted by sitepoint.com, these more vibrant color schemes aren’t limited to just web design, but can be found in fashion design, weathercast graphics, and interior design.

Card or container layouts have become more popular and using vibrant colors in these blocks creates a bold layout. Bright colors also help UI elements like buttons and navigation jump out from a page. Finally, bright palettes can have a strong brand affect — you can’t really think of Huge without thinking “bright pink,” or Google without “primary colors.”

There’s an artistry in using vibrant color schemes effectively and it’s easy to go overboard with a kaleidoscope of head-spinning hues, evoking that last time you saw Phish.

12. Broken grid layouts

‍Unlike windows, some grids were made to be broken.

Symmetrical websites may be beautiful in their simplicity, but strict geometry can also be confining. Broken grids are a way to loosen up layout, while still retaining some sense of visual order. This type of layout breaks free from convention and its freshness keeps people engaged. Be careful, as too much chaos may result in a confused jumble of content.

Breaking the grid, for reasons

We wholeheartedly recommend shaking up your grid systems, but be sure you’re doing it with cause. No design decision should be motivated by a statement like “because it looks cool.” Instead, think about how breaking the grid might mean something for your brand, and keep that meaning in mind as you build out your design.

For example, the Epicurrence website breaks the grid to shake up our usual perceptions of the relationship between imagery and content. And it’s more than just a slick design move — after all, this “non-conference” asks to shake up the way you think about industry events too.

No design decision should be motivated by a statement like 'because it looks cool.'

13. Dynamic storytelling

‍Created with Webflow, Morin Kuuhr’s website tell the story of their fiddles through brilliant imagery, copy, and video.

Businesses strive to connect with their customers. After all, people don’t want to interact with a cold, faceless entity — they want to interact with real people. Dynamic story uses video, graphics, and text to create an interactive journey that helps people get a richer understanding of a brand, the people behind it, and the value of their mission.

Same goes for products. Nothing emerges from a vacuum, devoid of history. There’s always a backstory, and giving people a glimpse of that story adds dimension and depth to what might otherwise be just another piece of software.

14. Direct chat with support

‍I just chatted to say I really need your help.

Chatting with customers and responding to their questions helps personalize a company's web presence. Apps like Intercom modernize the support experience by mirroring how messaging works on social media sites like Facebook. The ability to get help immediately also helps build trust in a brand.

Chat thus becomes an effective tool in helping customers solve their problems. For those who aren’t comfortable with computers, a representative can now help them remotely by cobrowsing or screen-sharing. And it removes the need to find and then browse through dense technical documentation, reducing friction.

Direct chat can also help convert new users in a highly contextual way. After all, if you’re working to solve a particular problem and suddenly get a message that helps you overcome exactly that problem, your belief in a product will skyrocket.

15. Full-screen sign up “modals”

‍Sujan Patel uses a full-screen modal on his blog to encourage people to sign up for his newsletter.

Traditional popups are done. Will full-screen takeovers replace them?

Instead of interrupting you right when you thought tip #3 was getting really good, these full-screen “modals” push the content down, filling your whole screen. The smooth scrolling action makes it less disruptive, and the full-screen layout offers more space to incorporate actually persuasive content. Plus, there’s no need to manually close out the modal — you just scroll to move on.

With email marketing being such a huge deal, getting interested customers to sign up is more important than ever. And while they might not present a perfect-world solution where blogs just let us sign up if we want to, at least they’re a bit less annoying.

16. Custom illustration and iconography

Primer Stories uses custom graphics and GIFs to tell beautiful stories.

Yes, you can find tons of well-designed stock visuals to use in your designs. But to really set yourself apart, you need to create something unique. Having someone create visuals and iconography customizes your website and projects your personality. Plus, it shows that you really put time and care into this design.

Stock graphics are one of the hallmarks of the boring homogeneity many people perceive in the web design world. Creating custom visuals that speak directly with and to your content offers one way out of the fast food design trap. Here’s hoping we see much, much more of this.

17. Looking to the future: virtual reality for the web

‍Virtual reality will one day take us to places we never imagined before — and the same ole places, but in new ways.

It may be in only its earliest stages of development, but virtual reality web browsing will one day be a ... uh ... reality. Mozilla’s WebVR team envisions a virtual reality web where every site can present people with an immersive, 3D reality utterly different from the web we’ve grown used to. Like most virtual reality technologies, WebVR still has a ways to go before it will easily accessible to most people.

That said, there’s no better time to think about the future than right now.

What trends have you seen in 2016 — and what do you see coming next?

The web teems with innovative design and content approaches, so we’re sure we missed something. Let us know what you’ve seen this year — and what you’d like to see even more of — in the comments below!

By: Jeff Cardello

Writer, improviser, and reformed music snob. 

Shared by : webtady.com | Small business website design company from webflow 

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Google launches Allo, its AI-centric messaging app

Google's new messaging app is here.

The company is launching Allo, its AI-centric messaging app for iOS and Android that offers an early peek at some of its most robust artificial intelligence capabilities yet. First previewed during its I/O developer conference earlier this year, the app combines the best of Google's predictive and search superpowers along with an all-new personal assistant feature. 

At first glance, Allo looks very similar to many other messaging apps. You sign up with your phone number and after verifying your identity, the app scans your address book to find people you may know who are also using the app.

Beginning a one-on-one or group chat is fairly straightforward. In addition to the standard text messages, you can record a voice message, send a photo with a doodle (for Android only right now), or share a map to your current location. The app also includes a number of themed sticker packs you can use to liven up your chats.

The reason you'll want to use Allo is because it offers a hint at the AI-filled future Google envisions.

But none of that is why you'll want to use Allo. The reason you'll want to use Allo is because it offers a hint at the AI-filled future Google envisions. It's home to Google Assistant, the new conversational assistant that Google plans to bring to many more of its consumer products.

The first sign that Allo is a bit smarter than the standard messaging app is through a feature called Smart Replies. Throughout your conversations, the app will suggest words and phrases before you start typing. If someone asks "how was your weekend," for instance, the app may suggest "it was good" or "fun." Google has been experimenting with this type of technology for awhile — it rolled out a similar feature for its email app, Inbox, last year — and Allo's Smart Replies are surprisingly good. In my early testing, the automatically generated responses were useful more often than not, though they did occasionally miss the mark.

Even more impressive, Google has combined this feature with its photo recognition abilities, so the app is able to suggest responses to photos that are shared within your conversation.

But Smart Replies are just the start of Allo's AI savvy. More importantly, the app is Google's first opportunity to show off Google Assistant.

It's all about the Assistant

First off, a quick word about (the rather poorly named) Google Assistant. While you'd be forgiven for thinking it's a bot like those used in Facebook Messenger, Kik and other apps, Google Assistant is much more than a simple messaging bot, which tend to have a fairly limited set of capabilities. Instead, Google Assistant is much closer to Facebook's vision for M, the social network's own AI-based assistant. (Facebook M, however, is still limited to a small number of early testers and largely depends on humans to oversee its interactions.) 

Google Assistant is still in a "preview" stage, according to Google, who plans to bring the feature to many more products in the future, like its smart speaker Google Home. But, preview or not, the feature is already more impressive than gimmicky. 

There are two ways to interact with Google Assistant. You can chat with it directly — Assistant appears alongside your other conversations in the app — or you can call it up while you're chatting with friends by starting a message with @Google.

In both cases, it can help with many things that you would use a quick Google search for (think translations, conversions, directions, flight statuses etc.) and even has a few extra tricks, like (again) photo recognition. I uploaded a photo I snapped on a recent vacation to the Mayan pyramid at Chichen Itza in Mexico, and Google Assistant quickly asked me if I wanted to learn more about Mayan history.

When you're in a chat with one or more friends you can use Google Assistant as a kind of shortcut to Google searches. Things that Google can do "natively" like conversions, simple Google searches and translations will appear directly in your chat while other queries will surface links to Google results.

It may take a little getting used to — it feels a bit clunky to "ask" Google a question in the middle of a conversation — but it's actually pretty useful (and saves a lot of app switching.)

Google Assistant is even more useful when you get it one-on-one. There, in addition to everything else, you can ask the assistant about your calendar, set reminders and get the latest headlines. If you have an Android device, you can also set alarms, timers, search your photos and make phone calls via Google Assistant.

Allo's creators have also made sure that Google Assistant has the nerdy sense of humor we've come to expect from Google. It may not have Siri's dry wit, but it is more than up for a joke or two and you can even play a few games with it.

The "creepy" factor

Google's biggest hurdle with Allo may be convincing people that all this AI isn't creepy. While tech enthusiasts may think its cool that Google can recognize the photos I'm sharing, predict what messages I want to write, and help me make weekend plans, others may find it a bit creepy. But Google has made efforts to address the concerns of the privacy conscious as well.

Messages sent within Allo are encrypted by default, but don't use end-to-end encryption, a standard favored by members of the security community and privacy advocates. You can, however, opt for an incognito chat, which does use end-to-end encryption. These conversations can also include self-destructing messages and the ability to block new messages from appearing on your phone's lock screen.


Whether or not these features will be enough to persuade skeptics is another matter. But if Google can make its assistant feel more necessary than creepy, then it might win people over. While Google's future plans for the feature are so far unclear, it's already promised we'll see it in a lot more places very soon and that it will only improve and get smarter over time. And that certainly seems like a good start.


Shared from: http://mashable.com
Repost by : webtady.com | Small business website design company

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