What is Grow with GRV?
Grow with GRV is a series that I felt compelled to release, keeping in mind the current market situation that has badly hit businesses and jobs across the globe. One way to adapt to the rapidly changing market is by going digital. If you offer a product or service that was majorly dependent on offline sales, follow this series to learn how to infuse digital DNA in your business strategy. By doing so, you shall be able to neutralise a notable amount of damage caused by plummeting offline sales.
So recently I was contacted by a potential client from the UK to manage her digital presence. The first question she asked me was ‘what do I require to launch a new website in 2020?’
A very good question indeed! With so many websites out there, what is it that makes the good ones stand out? Well, here is a list of 5 essential elements that I find make for an awesome website in 2020. Not only do these elements enhance the user experience when browsing your website, but they also help your website rank better on search engines in the long run.
So what exactly are these 5 essential elements?
- Responsive website: Long gone are the days when websites were browsed only on a computer. Nowadays there are so many different screen sizes that your website may be viewed in that it has become of prime importance for your website design to be responsive instead of fixed. This means that regardless of the mobile, tablet or computer that a visitor might be using for browsing your website looks best. A responsive design realigns itself to fit well on whatever screen it is being browsed on. So make sure your website has a good responsive design when launching a new one in 2020.
- SEO optimisation: This is one robust element that needs a lot of attention to detail. Hence, it is always best to hire an SEO consultant (like me) to make your website search engine friendly. This element includes details like URL, internal links and external links, image metadata, content tags, etc. These are few from the long list things to keep in check for improving the SEO score of your website in 2020.
- Secure connection: A secure connection not only makes the visitor feel more comfortable while browsing your website, but it also helps your website rank better on search engines. A search engine is more likely to show more results from secure website connections when compared to those that aren’t. So how do you know if a website connection is secure? A link that starts with ‘HTTP’ is not secure while the one with ‘https’ is a secure one. Yes, the ‘s’ in ‘https’ does refer to secure. It is an abbreviation for HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure. To get a secure connection ‘https’ you need a well-encrypted website that qualifies for an SSL certification. HTTPS is about preventing web traffic from being read as it travels across the Internet. So if your website is requesting any sort of personal information like name, email or other contact details, the data of your visitor is more secure when being registered via a secure connection.
- Site speed: No matter how good your website is, if it does not load quickly enough you will lose visitors. We are living in a world where speed has got everything to do with lifestyle. Our attention spans seem to have reduced drastically over the last decade or two. Gone are the days when people used to wait for a minute or so to open a webpage. Now it has all come down to seconds and milliseconds. Not convinced by this argument yet? Well, just hop over to Google (one of most used websites worldwide) and type in a search query of choice. Right on top, before the search results, you will see the number of results and time taken to show the result. Not only that, but there is also a buzz that websites with faster loading speeds tend to rank better than slower counterparts. There is something called Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), a Google-backed project which is an open-source HTML framework that optimises webpages to load faster for mobile browsing. Since it Google-backed, the webpages that have been AMP-enabled seem to rank better in Google search too!
- Authentic content: Often overlooked, undervalued and downplayed is the importance of the content on your website. Clients often pay so much attention to the design and technical details of a website that they miss out paying due attention to the most important aspect of a website – CONTENT. This is what makes your website unique, this is what search engines scan through for ranking your webpages. If these weren’t enough reasons to consider it as the most important aspect; consider this – the content on your website is what can make it unique and valuable as it is content that provides visitors with information or entertainment they were looking for. The more value your visitors find in your content, the more they are likely to spend time on your website. Which not only gives you more opportunity for monetary gains but also helps your website rank better on search engines!