The website you develop for your startup will be what many form their first impression of your business from and what will either make or break your credibility. Set your new business up for success by ensuring that you include these elements to promote engagement and interaction with your website.
- Strong domain name
Your business’s domain name will often be the first encounter someone has with your brand. Therefore, you must choose and register something that is easy to read, is memorable, and that preferably has some relevance to your brand and/or your industry. Your startup’s domain name will be what appears on search engines and what you should include on advertisements and on your brand’s social media channels. It should serve as a call to action for the individual to visit your website and as a piece of your brand that will spark a memory of what you do and what you have to offer when someone sees the name again for the second or third time.
- Why you exist/your vision
A perfect opportunity to really engage a user of your website is to communicate to them why what they are looking at even exists. Tell them where your startup’s passion lies and how it hopes to make change, or help others, or offer the best in its class. A company that cares and that cares enough to share WHAT it cares about and WHY is a company that makes itself more genuine and less removed from the public. Include text that speaks directly to the reader and that conveys that you are happy the reader made it to your website.
- What it is you offer
In addition to the more abstract, feely component of your company’s vision, your website also needs to have a home for the more concrete, basic facts like what goods or services your business has to offer. This of course is fairly self-explanatory, but a user wants to be given a clear picture of what it is you can do for them. If they have to search all throughout your site to find this information, or if the information that is presented on the homepage is confusing, you will certainly lose user engagement.
- Supporting images and graphics
Although the textual content that your website contains is very important, users can be overwhelmed by a mass of text that lacks proper image and graphic placement. Make your website more pleasing to the eye and give it more substance and a chance to put personality and company culture on display through visual elements like photos and graphics.
- Links to social media accounts
Social media is so commonly used both by individuals and by businesses today that not having social media accounts (or not using them well) can cause the public to lose some interest in your company. On your website, whether it be on the homepage itself or through readily identifiable clickable icons throughout the site, be sure to place links to your brand’s social media accounts. Sharing the links to your company’s social media pages can boost its sense of credibility, while also promoting user engagement.
Undoubtedly, your startup’s website will be more successful if you do a lot more than just the list items presented here. However, these elements are vital to your website’s success in engaging its user by providing them the information they want and need and by giving them a pleasant and memorable online experience. We all gotta start somewhere…right?