Is your website designed with your target consumer in mind? Remember, your website isn’t for you – it’s to showcase your business in a way that resonates with and is easily understood by your users.
Your website must be aesthetically pleasing, intuitively structured, and informative – if not, all those potential customers will bounce back to your competition.
In terms of informative content, there are several pages people will expect to find on your website. Below you’ll find the 10 essential pages every business website should have – along with recommended pages depending on your niche.
10 Must-Have Website Pages for Every Business (and Some Miscellaneous Ones to Consider)
- Homepage
Unrealistic expectations to multitask and our increasingly cluttered digital environment has put undue strain on our capacity to focus. When someone clicks through to your website, your homepage has to cut through the noise within the millisecond. People know what they’re looking for – if your homepage copy and layout doesn’t send the right signals, they’re not going to waste their time.
Your homepage is the cover to your book – people want to know who you are at a glance. Your homepage should include eye-catching design, lightning speed loading time, and a succinct description of who you are and what you do.
- About Page
The about page is your chance to humanize your business. It’s far easier for your potential customers to make a connection with you when they can put a face to the brand.
Here are some elements your about page should include:
- An overview of your company, including information such as what you do, who you serve, your mission, and company history.
- A list of team members, including a clear, portrait-style photo, job title, and short bio on what their job entails and a few fun facts to make them more relatable.
- Any accolades or community outreach
- How you stand out from the competition. Why should someone choose you over another company that provides the same service or product?
- Product and/or Services Page
Your product or services page should have a complete overview of what you are selling. List your products or services and give a short description of each. In addition to these product/service overviews, you’ll want to create a dedicated landing page for each offering.
Don’t just include the specs – your content needs to make an emotional appeal by hitting the consumer’s pain points. In addition to product or service specifications, you need to enumerate the pros and cons – how is your product going to solve their problem?
- FAQ Page
The Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page benefits both you and your customers. The FAQ page provides quick answers for users and saves you the hassle of having to answer the same questions a gazillion times. This list will vary from niche to niche, but an effective FAQ page should assist consumers at every stage of their buying journey, drive traffic to relevant internal pages, and promote trust.
- Testimonials/Reviews Page
Highlight what your fans are saying on a dedicated testimonial page – it helps to use widgets that embed reviews on your homepage, too. Make sure your reviews can be traced back to the source by including the reviewer’s name, and business name where applicable to add authenticity. Each review should have an eye-catching headline, as well.
If you want to rake in the reviews, check out our article on How to Ask for Reviews and Testimonials.
- Contact Page
Contact pages that only include forms asking for consumer details but neglects to have the business contact details makes people think twice about filling it out – it gives the impression that your business has something to hide. In addition to a comprehensive contact page, ensure your details like address, phone number and email are on every page of your site (usually at the bottom along with your social media icons). Also, be sure to keep contact forms simple – you don’t want your consumer to have to jump through hoops to get a hold of you.
Take a look at Social Spice Media’s contact page to see what the ideal contact page looks like. You’ll see that we’ve included a succinct, two sentence description of what we do (“deliver digital marketing solutions”) and how that benefits the client (“increase sales and make a lasting impact”); a simple contact form; our contact details, including business phone, email, and hours of operation; and a Google map widget to show our exact location.
- Blog Page
Blogging is absolutely essential for any business who wants to amp up lead generation: B2B companies generate 67 percent more leads through active blogging, while B2C companies rake in 88 percent more leads.
Business blogs allow you to provide fresh content that builds brand awareness, demonstrates your credibility and expertise, pushes you to the top of SERPs, and makes a connection with your audience.
- Privacy Policy Page
The privacy policy page is meant to assuage user apprehension when it comes to their personal information by informing users exactly how you will be using their data. Transparency is key here.
Your privacy policy page should tell consumers what information you collect, how you collect it (e.g. with “cookies”), how you intend to use it (e.g. to contact them with newsletters, marketing, or promotional materials), and anything regarding security measures and changes to the policy.
Check out our privacy policy page to get an idea of what a comprehensive one should include.
- Sitemap Page
Sitemaps have a twofold purpose: to provide some scaffolding for Google crawlers as well as an easy-to-navigate index of all pages across your website for human visitors. There are two versions of a sitemap you’ll need to create: the XML version (for bots) and the HTML version (for humans). Website platforms, such as WordPress, often provide plugins that allow you to easily create both an XML sitemap and an HTML sitemap without needing coding skills or tech know-how.
- 404 Error Page
While the website hosting server you use to support your domain will generate a boiler plate 404 error page, aka page not found page, it’s a good idea to customize your own.
Whatever design or copy you decide to include, you should always include a button to link back to your homepage. You can also include a search form like the search bar in Google so users can enter keywords to navigate to other parts of your site.
You can suit the page to match your brand style. Take a look at the examples below:
Miscellaneous Pages
The following is a list of website pages you might want to include depending on your sphere of operation.
- Search result page
- Jobs or careers page
- Events page
- Advertising information page
- Affiliate link disclosure page
- Press/latest news page
- Terms and Conditions page
A Word on Website Aesthetics
As we said before, consumers will judge your book by the cover – and that first impression is everything. Before they even read a word, visitors will be taking in the aesthetic design of your site.
A high-performing website will have an updated, eye-catching design with intuitive navigation and dynamic response to screen size. If you’d like to see what an engaging, modern design looks like, you can find a portfolio of before-and-afters of some of our work here.
If you want to put your best foot forward with a website that reflects your amazing business, contact Social Spice Media. We offer a full spectrum web development package that includes design, content, and SEO services for a sharp and sophisticated website that outperforms your competition.
