When more than 75% of users judge a company’s credibility based on its website design, it is hard to ignore the importance of a website nowadays.
It’s no longer optional to have a website. If you want your brand to grow in Chicago, then you need a compelling website that attracts and retains customers.
With how competitive Chicago is, regardless of the industry and niche your brand is in, everything related to your company matters. Every web design mistake your website has can cost sales every day.
This article will show you the importance of a good website and what every good page should have regardless of what it’s about.
From investment to features, we’ll go through the important things needed to get ahead of your Chicago competitors.
Want to build a new website but don’t know where to start? Let us help.
Do You Even Need to Invest in a Website?
This is a common question we get all the time. While you aren’t obligated to invest in a website for your business, you are severely limiting your reach and sales by not having a website.
Why? Because everything is digital nowadays. Everyone opens a browser if they want to buy something or if they are interested in a brand.
Your Chicago brand could have the best service or product at an appealing price, but if no one can find it, then it’s pointless. A good, compelling website for your Chicago business can help get potential customers interested in your products or services quickly.
Not only that, a good website with proper strategies can help you gain new customers organically by helping you to appear on search engine results pages (SERPs).
So yes, investing in a compelling website for your Chicago business is mandatory if you want to grow on a consistent basis.
But what makes a normal and generic website turn into a website that people enjoy going through?
There are several factors, but there are some must-have features that every good website focuses on first.
Below we’ll go through each of them and explain why they’re vital in any website strategy.
Must Have Features for Your Chicago Website
These features are not organized in order of importance. In fact, every single feature here deserves serious attention and should receive as much effort as the next one.
1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search engine optimization is a vital part of any website. Without any SEO best practices in place, your website is virtually invisible to the world unless users click your link directly from social media or paid ads.
SEO helps your website and its pages appear on search engine results pages along with other pages ranking for a specific keyword.
Optimizing your keywords, improving the quality of your content, meta descriptions, and ensuring that your backlinks look good are just some of the strategies for ranking higher.
The reality is that working on your web design and SEO is a marathon, not a sprint. You have to consistently work on it every day to see progress.
This means creating written content that is SEO-friendly on a weekly basis, double-checking your meta descriptions on all your pages, and working on your interlinking and backlinks daily. This is just some of the work you’ll need to do.
We won’t sugarcoat it; SEO strategies take a lot of time and commitment, but you will start seeing a flow of organic traffic coming to your website in as little as a couple of weeks.
Learn how we improved Voss Water’s organic reach by 36% with this case study.
There are several plugins and apps that help organize your SEO efforts.
- Yoast SEO: A popular plugin used mainly for WordPress websites to review their SEO efforts on each page. The plugin shows you what SEO practices you are missing and which ones you are doing correctly. It’s a great plugin for every brand owner who wants a quick overview of their brand’s SEO efforts without having to go through multiple pages of analytics.
- Rank Math: This plugin is Yoast’s direct competitor by providing similar features and services. The main difference Rank Math has over Yoast is that it is meant for users who are more experienced with SEO. This means that there is a higher learning curve when it comes to using all of its features. But you get a more intricate and detailed set of features that can be used to tweak SEO further.
- Ahrefs: One of the two most popular SEO tools in the market. Ahrefs helps you figure out which keywords you should be using in an organized way. It’s also the go-to choice when researching competitors and learning what keywords they are focusing on and on which pages. It is a must-have for any Chicago brand looking to take its SEO seriously.
- SEMRush: This is Ahrefs’ main competitor and for good reason. They offer pretty much all of the same features that Ahrefs has but with a different UI. Picking between the two is mostly based on preference since both Ahrefs and SEMRush have all the features you’ll need to work on your SEO strategies.
2. Mobile Optimization
Creating a website and ignoring how it looks on a mobile is a massive mistake that can make most, if not all, of your mobile visitors leave out of frustration.
When more than 60% of searches online are made with mobile devices, it makes perfect sense why having a mobile-friendly website is necessary.
Not only does having a mobile-friendly website help potential customers stay on your website, but it also directly affects your SEO.
Having no mobile version of your website signals Google’s search engine that your website isn’t as valuable compared to a similar website with a mobile-friendly design.
A website that adheres to mobile standards is easy to read without having to zoom, loads quickly, and has buttons that are easy to press. These are only the main features of a good mobile website, but there are more, such as screen ratios and menus fitting correctly.
It’s easy to dismiss mobile optimization when we’re not looking at it from the perspective of a visitor. Imagine you enter a website on your phone while at a coffee shop; you want to buy a specific item from a new brand you found and notice that their website is hard to navigate on mobile.
Despite wanting to buy their product, the lack of mobile optimization might make you change your mind instantly.
The reality is that no one wants to jump through hoops and struggle on a website just to buy a product.
Most, if not all, visitors will leave and find an alternative brand with a similar product if a website isn’t optimized for mobile devices.
A mobile-friendly website will help you build trust with potential buyers by creating a good first impression as soon as they enter your site.
By simplifying their mobile experience, you make it as easy as possible for them to buy your product.
3. Strategic Calls-to-Action
Even a beautifully designed website will generate little to no sales if it doesn’t have persuasive and well-placed calls-to-action (CTAs).
Good CTAs are the guideposts that help users know what they should be doing next. This can be signing up for a newsletter, downloading a resource, completing a purchase, and more.
CTAs should stand out and be easy to find without having to look all over the page.
Being creative with the copy you use is also vital. Using “Claim Your Free Resource” will always be more enticing to click than “Learn More” because they know they will gain something from clicking.
Make sure to tailor your CTAs to your specific product or service, though. Using a fake CTA just to make people click is a great way to make potential customers leave and never come back.
Explore how we increased Platt College’s organic traffic by 40% in our latest case study.
4. Analytics and Personalization
One of the most compelling pros of digital sales is how easy it is to track and analyze customer behavior. Tools like Google Analytics and Hotjar let Chicago brands understand how visitors interact with their websites.
This helps them learn what works and what doesn’t with little to no guesswork.
With analytics tools, you can understand which pages are underperforming, where in the funnel visitors leave, and what types of products are often viewed together. This information makes it easy to refine your website and do multiple A/B tests to figure out what works best.
Personalization goes hand in hand with analytics since it relies on them to make the proper changes on your website.
Nowadays, Artificial Intelligence (AI) can help personalize your website in real time based on a visitor’s preferences. Showing them products they might like based on product pages they viewed or from a past purchase.
Consumers are more likely to buy from a brand that consistently provides them with recommendations tailored to their preferences.
By taking advantage of data, you can tailor interactions in a way that makes your website feel engaging to most, if not all, potential customers.
5. Social Proofing
While your Chicago brand might seem super trustworthy in your eyes, the reality is that potential customers will always doubt you, especially if it’s their first time interacting with your brand. They will always trust your past customers and reviews.
This is why having good social proof is essential if you want to increase your sales.
Social proof can take the form of customer reviews, case studies, logos of brands you have worked with before, and even user-generated content (UGC). Every industry has a preferred type of social proof material that will lead to better results.
For eCommerce Chicago platforms, showcasing reviews as soon as possible on product pages is vital if they want to earn the trust of potential customers quickly.
B2B companies mainly benefit from case studies that highlight their expertise and how they have helped past customers.
UCG, such as product reviews and videos using the product, is great to add authenticity to your Chicago brand. The use of influencers for visibility is also a great way to gain the trust of thousands of users.
Make sure to do your research if you plan on working with an influencer. The last thing you want is to pay someone thousands of dollars only for them to have the wrong audience for your brand.
Or even worse, fake followers.
Other consumers often provide the reassurance needed to turn a skeptical visitor into a paying customer.
Examples of Good Chicago Brand Websites
Below we have two of our favorite Chicago brands that show how a successful website looks by applying all the features mentioned above.
Lou Malnati’s
Lou’s website is simple and to the point. Its use of vibrant colors to highlight its food and offers is the perfect way for any brand to get customers interested fast.
Instead of making visitors search for the page to order or find a location, it makes it convenient by adding CTAs to the main part of the homepage.
Overall, their website is the perfect example of what to do to have high conversion rates without reinventing the wheel.
Goose Island Beer
Goose Island Beer is a unique beer company that sells beverages with unique and eye-catching designs. They take advantage of this and use simple backgrounds to let the beer can designs stand out.
Instead of trying to make their website unique by adding complicated designs or transitions, they double down on their actual product designs so people feel enticed to learn more about them.
Get a High-Converting Chicago Website With Blacksmith
We just went through what a Chicago website needs to be compelling and drive sales, so what now?
Now it’s time for you to implement these features and ideas into your own website, be it by reworking your old website completely or by making a new one.
But working on a website takes a long time. In fact, it could take weeks or months, even with a plan set. This is time that you could use for other important parts of your business. So what are you supposed to do then?
That’s where we step in. Here at Blacksmith, we have dozens of different website projects under our belts. As a Chicago web design agency we have a group of seasoned web designers ready to redesign your website or create a completely new one from scratch.
Unsure if investing in a new website is what your Chicago brand needs to increase sales?
Don’t worry, click here to schedule a call with us and we’ll provide you with a free audit. This will help us show you the areas where your brand could do better website-wise and what we could do to improve every issue your website currently faces.
