Your business website is the basis of your online presence.

While all businesses generally have a profile on various online platforms, a business website is where interested visitors will go to learn more about a business and determine if they trust the business or not. Research has shown that once a visitor lands on your website, they form an opinion of that website in less than three seconds and will leave within 10 – 20 seconds.

With so little time to make a good impression and entice a visitor to stay, you need to be sure that the design of your website meets the following criteria. Or your visitors might head on over to your competitions website to find what they are looking for.

1. Navigation
The site should be inviting as well as user friendly and easy to navigate. Without a clean design and layout, the site will give the impression of being unorganized and unprofessional. View your website as the front door into your business, which should be inviting to customers, encouraging them to walk in rather than pass you by. Then, once the customer steps in, you want them to be interested enough to explore and find what they are looking for. Your website is the front door into your business and if it doesn’t seem welcoming or easy to navigate through, the visitor will quickly lose interest and go elsewhere.

Having easy to find navigation tools on your website encourages visitors to explore and find out about your company. If they have to dig or if the directions aren’t easy, they may leave out of frustration.

2. Image Focus
If you choose to have an image as the main focus on the homepage of your website, select one that clean with a main point of interest. This image should be aesthetically pleasing and professionally designed. Images are great tools for guiding the eye to a call-to-action on the main page. Another detail regarding a primary image is having it optimized for fast download.

3. Content
The content on your website should focus on the customer and how your product or service will make their life better. Use a tone that is friendly and in a format that will resonate with your customer demographic. You want to provide information that is concise and valuable to the viewer. This demeanor helps build brand recognition and customer loyalty.

4. Share Buttons
Most likely you are marketing elsewhere online and if so, be sure to include share buttons for the various social media pages. The online community has come to expect access to share buttons and not only does this help build your brand, it will also provide you with tools to track what is being shared about your business as well as monitoring visitors and traffic.

Your business website is, in a way a salesperson for your business and of course you want one that convinces people to buy from you. While you have only so much control over how visitors will respond to your website, when you incorporate visual aesthetics and ease of use, your visitors will more likely become customers.