Member Article

Five Website Features

Five Website Features that can Give your Design a Little Extra Jazz

The key to creating a good website is to achieve a balance between functionality and aesthetic appeal. While it?s never wise to overload a page with tons of features that have limited usefulness, a few well placed additions can be a great way of providing extra functionality for your visitors. Here are five ideas which may be suitable additions to your business? website.

Search box

If you carry a lot of content on your website, whether that?s product descriptions, articles or anything else, adding an internal search box is often not just a good idea, but essential. Being able to find what they want quickly with minimum fuss is a major usability plus for visitors, and encourages them to stay on your site for longer and visit more often.

Online/ downloadable product catalogue

If you?re selling actual physical products, a professional-looking digital catalogue can be great place to showcase them, featuring pictures of each product along with a description and specifications. You can use third-party software to create a web-based catalogue, or create a downloadable PDF file.

Video

The popularity of online video as a medium is sky-high and continuing to grow. Adding videos to your site (for example, presentations, product demonstrations, how to/ informative videos etc) is perfect if you have a lot of information that you want to convey relatively quickly and without boring your prospective clients.

Calendar

If you have many events such as workshops, seminars or sporting fixtures that you want your visitors to have access to at a glance, adding a calendar in a prominent place on your site is highly effective.

Blog /forums

The web isn?t just a one-way transmissions, it?s a conversation. Adding features to your web site that allow your visitors to have their say can enable you to learn a great deal about what they want. By increasing their engagement level with your site, it can also lead to visitors staying longer and coming back more often.

A final word of caution though ? take care that in adding features to your website design you don?t overload visitors, and bear in mind the negative effect that some can have on page loading times.

Talk to one of our web development experts today to make sure any changes or additions to your website will enhance the visitors experience leaving them wanting more rather than bouncing off to a competitor?s website.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Jon Celeste .