There are over 1.5 billion active websites online.

Every second of every day, your website goes up against a vast number of competitors to attract users based on its design and user experience. The more people find your website helpful and easy to use, the better your ability to attract and convert leads.

With that in mind, here’s a look at eight mission-critical website features that can help make your site indispensable to users.

1. Simplicity

Leonardo da Vinci once remarked that simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. When it comes to your website, this couldn’t be any truer.

At the core, if a user can't intuitively figure out how to use your website, they will abandon it. Not only that but once a user associates your site with complexity, it will be hard to convince them to revisit it.

Pay attention to any user feedback that centers on asking how to use a particular feature. That’s an indicator of complexity you need to unravel for better user experience.

2. High-Quality Content

Why do people come to your website? It’s to solve a problem they have. Therefore, you should take the time to understand your target audience as that helps you narrow down on their needs. Doing so enables you to develop content that speaks to the needs of your target audience.

The length of your content will also matter. Ideally, your written content should range from 2,000 to 2,450+ words. The human mind processes visual material in as little as 13 milliseconds. Consequently, you need to sprinkle in visual material such as high-quality images and infographics to enhance the content.

3. Easily Accessible Customer Service

Few things can be as frustrating as not finding help when you most need it. If you want to ship an unforgettable user experience, you must empower visitors on your site to solve issues quickly.

Having an easily accessible customer service section is critical. A user shouldn't have to hunt to find the solution to a problem they are experiencing while using your site. Make it a point to offer several ways your users can find help, such as live chat or scheduling a call.

4. Readability

If your website exists to serve users more effectively, any content you have needs to meet excellent readability standards. Simply put, readability is the ease with which written content can be easily understood.

Anytime you're developing written material for your site, you should use the Flesch reading ease formula to assess how easy it is for users to read your content. The better visitors can understand the content on your site, the more effective your website will be.

5. Custom Design

Today, it’s easy for a business to kick up a quick website using templates. Although that sounds appealing, it has a hidden shortcoming. Since you will be using a similar template with many of our competitors, there will be a thread of design similarity despite any differentiated branding.

However, when you rely on custom website design, you can develop a one of a kind site that highlights your brand. If you choose to have a blog - which you should - custom website design helps your blog stand out.

Using custom design will help you better develop unique features critical to your business. Ultimately, it will contribute to how well you satisfy your users.

6. Responsive Design

A thorny issue for many business websites is the failure to be compatible with many devices. That’s a big problem as most of your users will visit your website on multiple devices, depending on when and how they are accessing your site.

You don't want a potential customer in the office to look up your site on their laptop only to have a worse experience while browsing your website on their cell phone when leaving the office.

Visitors will leave rather than try to make heads or tails of what's happening. Responsive site design will offer a consistent user experience across various devices to help retain users.

7. Effective Maintenance Plan

Would you consider not maintaining your office or business vehicles regularly? Your website is also a business asset that needs regular maintenance.

Broken links will always occur, and if you don't have a system in place to keep maintaining your website, you’ll not notice them. As a result, users will begin to frequently encounter errors that add friction to their experience, pushing them away from the site.

Ensure you develop a maintenance plan that addresses several aspects of your website regularly. These include analytics, backups, security, updates, content, and site monitoring.

8. Your Contact Information

No matter how great your firm’s site is, if you don't incorporate all your contact information, you won’t inspire confidence in users.

When a visitor sees contact information and live map links for your business on the site, they deem you credible. That can even be the tipping point in whether you convert a lead or not.

To this end, your website needs to have the business’ phone number, physical address (and a live map link where possible), work email, and social media profile links. That will make your firm appear more trustworthy.

Where you place your contact information also matters. While it may not be front and center on your site, don't consign your contact information to an obscure region on your website. It needs to be in a position where a user can find it without any strain.

9. Security Badges

Every visitor landing on your website cares about their security. Unless you show users the measures you’re taking to keep them safe when they’re using your website, you won't inspire confidence.

An effective way to reassure visitors your site is secure is by placing security badges on each page. As with contact information, security badges need to be located where it’s easy for users to notice them without straining.

Deliver Website Features That Help Ship an Unforgettable User Experience

Many websites compete with yours for the attention of users. To ship an exceptional user experience, you need to incorporate website features that help users make better use of your site. Only then will your business have greater success in retaining and converting leads.

Optuno exists to give businesses the benefit of a full-service web agency without them spending the big bucks. Talk to us today for website development services that take the stress out of running your business website.