What once consisted of text-heavy pages with distracting imagery and dizzying effects, corporate websites have (thankfully) evolved into a company’s most powerful marketing tool. A website doesn’t just share your corporate message. It provides solutions to the challenges both you and your audience face.  But, there’s still more to consider.

Let’s dive deeper into the importance of a strong foundation for your website.

Website usability

User experience (UX) can (and will) make or break your online reputation. Buyers’ research activities are more in depth and your website should be a helpful place that educates them and keeps them coming back.

Did You Know? 40% of visitors to your website won’t return after having a negative experience.
(Source: Kissmetrics)

Leverage your extensive research of your target audiences and what you learned about their needs, wants and challenges. Structure your website’s architecture, navigation and page flow in a way that quickly gets users to the information they came to you for. With minimal clicks, you can empower them to easily navigate between pages. Creating your site architecture starts with a sitemap and wireframes.

A sitemap diagram is hierarchal list of pages complete with main topics and subtopics to confirm all key pages of the website have been considered. The sitemap is a high-level representation of how your navigation is structured.

A wireframe is a bare-boned illustration of a page that focuses specifically on space allocation and prioritization of content. Wireframes don’t show creative elements like color palette, imagery, fonts, creative treatments of CTAs.

Compelling web design

The most successful web designs perfectly balance creativity and usability. They push the creative limit just enough to leave a lasting first impression without unnecessarily introducing distractions.

High-quality content

Content for each service, solution, product you offer should be created with a consumer-centric mindset according to how we read content on the web. The antiquated text-heavy pages are far behind us. Instead, break copy into digestible, clearly labeled chunks that let users scan pages to find what they need. Content should focus on engaging the reader’s emotions with simple yet educational information and practical solutions that directly address the problems they are facing.

Did You Know? B2B buyers will use an average of 2.4 information sources when researching potential vendors.
(Source: Lead Forensics, B2B Guide to Turbo-Charged Lead Generation)

Responsive web design

A responsive website is designed and developed to adapt to the users’ screen size. This ensures accessibility across all devices: smartphones to tablets to desktop computers.

Did You Know? People spend nearly 40% of their Internet time on mobile devices.
(Source: MarketingLand)

A responsive website gives you a consistent web presence that will increase visibility, reach and conversions.

Finally, your website is only as powerful as the Content Management System (CMS) supporting it. A CMS is a program that serves as a database to upload, edit, and manage content displayed on a website. Choosing a CMS that enables your internal team to easily add new content, make changes and publish updates without having extensive technical knowledge can be critical to keeping your website updated.