5 Pages That Make Websites Better

We’ve previously covered the pages that all websites need, but today we’re going to take things a step further.

Our previous blog laid out the non-negotiables, things any Small Business Site that wants to succeed can’t be without. Now we move on to the things that will take you beyond the bare minimum, and into the realm of a fully realised digital presence.

If you’re looking to set yourself apart from the competition, here are the pages that can help you do that.

FAQ Page

If you find yourself regularly having to answer the same basic questions over and over again, then you need to get yourself an FAQ page.

These frequently asked questions waste your time and that of your Customers, costing you money and causing your Customer satisfaction to take a hit at the same time.

Eliminating this waste is simple, all it takes is a page listing the questions you get most often, and the answers underneath them. That’s it!

If you’ve got a lot of questions and need to make reading them all easier, a list of contents links at the start can make jumping around easier, and tucking them away in accordions lets you shorten the page.

Whatever solution you decide upon, an FAQ page is guaranteed to let you spend more time on work that’s productive.

Blog Page

When you’ve got a business doing exciting things that deserve attention, you need to be showing them off and getting that attention. Similarly, if you have industry expertise that your Customers can be benefiting from, they need to know about it!

You can solve both of these with a good blog. This will require regular work on your part, but the effort is well worth it. A regularly updated blog keeps your Site looking fresh and alive, useful for maintaining your SEO ranking and also attracting new Customers.

It also helps you to show off, an important aspect of building up your credibility as an industry expert. Your latest achievements, new products, tutorials, all of these and more can make for excellent blog posts that drive traffic to your Site and create new leads.

Remember to emphasise the in depth and high quality over the short and shallow, and you can see great success with a company blog.

Testimonials/Reviews Page

You’re amazing at what you do, and your Customers love you for it. That reputation for amazing work needs to be shared with everyone, and this page is how you do that.

It’s super simple to set up as well, all it takes is populating a page with the comments you’ve been left by satisfied Customers. If you want to get fancy, you can even record video testimonials to really add some pizazz to the page.

The page will demand some upkeep, but not a whole lot. If you only have one small handful of positive reviews to your name that never changes, you can start to look like a one hit wonder. This is most likely to happen if you’re using your Google reviews. 

Swapping your old reviews for new ones every few months is all it takes to keep things fresh. For larger testimonials that aren’t so easily dated, you can usually go years before you need to consider an update.

Sitemap

In case you’re not familiar, a sitemap is what it says, a page displaying a complete list of all the pages on your Site. A map to anywhere visitors might wish to go.

It’s hard to make a sitemap sound exciting, because they really aren’t, all sitemaps are and should be simple index pages. Your footer is the best place to provide a link to the sitemap.

Not everyone is going to appreciate a good sitemap, but those that do will love you for it.

Custom 404 Page

This may seem weird, but we’re now going to discuss designing a page you’ll do everything you can to prevent visitors to your Site from seeing.

A 404 error page, also known as a “page not found” page, is the page that is displayed when whatever was supposed to be displayed can’t be accessed. The most common reasons for this problem are that the page in question doesn’t exist anymore, has been moved, or has expired.

The error code for this technical hitch is 404, hence the name, and every browser has a default 404 page that will display if your visitors run into this error.

While you don’t want your visitors to end up here, it is an opportunity to advance your brand. You can create a custom 404 page that matches your branding, shows off your personality, and contains some links you want your visitors to follow, most likely your homepage so they can try again.

If you’re looking to be the best there ever was, you can’t settle for doing the bare minimum, you need to go above and beyond. If you think your Site could be better, then go out there and make it better!