In my 9 Crucial Must Have Pages to Put on Your Website post, I’m going to encourage you to put these pages on your website to improve user experience and boost sales. Websites can take on many different forms, styles and structures and offer hugely contrasting experiences for visitors.
However, if you want to make sure people find your website, trust it, stick around for more information, and sign up for your social media and email services, then there are some essentials you need:
9 Crucial Must Have Pages to Put on Your Website
- Home
- About Us
- Testimonials/Press Coverage
- Contact Us
- Blog
- Terms & Conditions
- Privacy Policy
- Email Sign-up
- Error Page
Home:
Your Home page is usually the most visited page on your website. Furthermore, people often land on it first and this is where they form an initial impression of you, so it’s important to deliver what they’re expecting. Your visitor might be arriving on your website for the first time from a Google search or a referral on social media. Or they may have clicked through from an email link or a website banner.
In essence the biggest danger is that your home page puts people off by being dull, confusing, unhelpful, out of date or irrelevant to their interests.
Here’s 4 things you can do to grab your visitor’s attention and keep it:
1. Demonstrate the benefits
Immediately establish what the benefits are to them. Ensure you know your customer profile inside out and examine exactly what deep desires, needs and goals have led them to your website. Provide what it is they are after within your copy, be it a solution to their problem, a tool that will help them and so on. Your website should be designed to appeal to your target audience.
2. Mission
It’s important to clearly state what your business mission, aims, ethics, and purpose are. If you do this openly there will be no confusion about what your intentions are and what you’re offering. Those visitors who are not interested can then leave. All this information can be communicated on your About Us page, but you should also provide it on your Home page and in your email sign-up pages.
3. Navigation
It’s crucial to offer an easy, clear, and coherent experience throughout your website. It’s imperative to have calls to action on every page. Also ensure your menu bar is easy to navigate with a breakdown of categories and have a drop-down menu with clear headlines if you have lots of categories. In addition, your copy should tell people exactly what to do.
4. Call to Action
Your Home page is the gateway to your business so make sure there’s a clear call to action strategically placed on it. For instance, this could be a click-through button, an email sign-up, or a social media link.
You could offer a free eBook, free gift, free report, free e-course, free cheatsheet or free trial. Just make sure what you’re offering is of value to your visitor and is related to your business niche.
About Us:
It’s vital to have an About Us page on your website. Many visitors click straight through to this page after landing on your Home page. This is where people go to find out more about who you are, what your history is and so on.
Here’s what a good About Us page should do:
Give your prospect confidence.
Show them that you have the expertise, passion, experience, or abilities to back up what you’re promising on your website. This will encourage them to read more, follow your social network updates or sign up for your newsletter.
Provide a compelling back story.
This will help to deepen your visitor’s relationship with you. When it comes to selling your story, your About Us page is your shopfront.
Push your values, brand, and goals.
This is where you can set out your stall and make sure your visitor knows what you’re really about and what your aims are.
Encourage browsing.
Ask your visitor to look around your website, purchase one of your products or sign up to your social media and email lists.
A very basic template might be:
HEADLINE CONTAINING BOLD STATEMENT
Hello, I’m [NAME] and I am [your JOB TITLE/ROLE]. I work with/write for [your TARGET CUSTOMER]. It all began when I [INSERT BACK STORY].
It is my belief that/I am passionate about [EMOTIONAL SUBJECT in your FIELD OF BUSINESSS].
My aim is to help you [overcome PROBLEM or achieve GOAL] and offer you [WHAT THEY WILL DISCOVER or WHAT YOU WILL PROVIDE]. For more help/information/advice, please follow [my emails/Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn/Instagram, etc]
If you’d like to know more, please contact [EMAIL, PHONE, etc]
Testimonials/Press Coverage:
Social proof is essential as it shows your visitor that other people have used your products/services and that you’re trustworthy. People are looking for reassurance that the individual/company they’re dealing with is honest and reliable. Including a feedback/testimonial page, a press coverage page or a review section helps overcome reservations. They want to feel safe especially if they’re about to part with their hard-earned cash and make a purchase.
You should post any positive feedback you’ve received on your website. Make sure to get permission from people to use their names, photos, videos, and other details. The more information testimonials contain the more credible they are and the greater impact they have on readers.
You can also include positive comments from experts, influencers, writers, CEOs, and authority figures too.
Have you been reviewed on other websites? If so, quote from those reviews and link back to them.
Have you had positive user reviews on websites such as Amazon or TripAdvisor. If so, take screenshots and link to them.
Always include a call to action:
- Subscribe to our email list.
- Follow us on social media.
- Browse our shop.
- Download a free report, free checklist, video, podcast.
Contact Us:
Include a page on your website that encourages your visitor to contact you in the easiest possible way. Make sure it contains your business email address, phone number, location (if you have one) and links to your social media accounts.
Also provide a form for them to subscribe to your emails. The more potential points of contact the better.
Remember: each one is a stepping stone and all communication is marketing.
Blog:
It’s important to post fresh, free content on your blog regularly. It should contain interesting and relevant information that helps your visitors in some way or another. By becoming a regular source of topical and useful content you build confidence with your readers. The more you communicate with your prospects, the more trust you’ll build.
Websites that are regularly updated with original and genuinely helpful content have more “authority” and are ranked higher by Google and other search engines. This means that your website will become more visible to people searching for information online.
A blog will also help you draw traffic from social media. The more your blog posts are shared on social networks, the more traffic you pick up.
Terms & Conditions:
Many people don’t ever read these pages, but your website absolutely must have a Terms & Conditions page. This helps establish credibility, transparency, and trust. Now these pages can often be long and boring and full of incomprehensible copy. However, try to write yours in understandable, conversational English.
Privacy Policy:
Having a Privacy Policy is another essential. It reassures your visitor that you won’t misuse their personal information, and also lets them know that they can have that information removed at any time.
Email Sign Up:
One of the best ways to turn a visitor into a prospect is to offer something of value for free in return for their email address. It could be a downloadable report, eBook, video tutorial, webinar, free trial, or checklist.
Whatever format you choose, it should be something that offers value to your prospect and builds their trust. In addition, it should convince them to hand over their email address without any resistance.
There was a time when free gifts were highly prized but these days they’ve become less effective. Everyday internet users receive a barrage of information from all angles. As a result, many lose track of what they have and end up never reading or watching most of it. Therefore, people are becoming a lot more selective about what they sign up for.
You can really harm your reputation if you wax lyrical about a free gift that turns out to be unsatisfactory and worthless. Or if you continually send pushy sales emails.
So, with that in mind…
1. Ensure that your free gifts, downloads, and other free offers are targeted at your ideal customer. Offer something specific that’s relevant to your business.
For instance, if you run a rooftop gardening website, don’t just offer a general “Gardening Tips” eBook. If you’re an online vintage guitar shop, don’t run a competition to “win cash” or “win an iPad” – run one to “win a gold plectrum” or “win a signed guitar”. You only want guitarists to enter, so don’t encourage non-guitarists to take part.
Make sure the ultimate payoff is clear to your prospect – the big promise of what your gift can deliver, plus all the benefits.
2. Your gift has to be unique and startling enough that your prospect will sit up and take notice. It needs to be genuinely useful or entertaining, as promised, and it needs to tap into core problems.
3. Make sure there’s a thank you email with contact details and then a welcome email thanking them again, with reassurances that they’re in good hands and you’re there to help. Direct them to your website.
4. Follow this up with regular update emails that deliver unique, personable, useful content that matches your initial promise. They have to build trust, credibility and respect.
Error Page:
The 404 Error Page is the page that appears if someone types in a wrong address on your website or clicks on a page that’s expired.
A lot of people will click off a website in annoyance when they see this because they assume it is out of date, old news or dodgy.
This is a lost opportunity to turn a stranger into a prospect. Make sure that your 404 page contains some friendly HUMAN copy that apologises for there being a problem, tells them how to solve the problem and gives them a call to action. For example, invite them to join your email list, follow you on social media, claim a special gift or visit your product page or shop.
If you use WordPress, you can easily create your own customised error page.
The 404page plugin can assist with this.
I hope you found my 9 Crucial Must Have Pages to Put on Your Websites post useful and that you can apply some of the content to help increase the success of your website.
To Your Success!
