Having your own website is typically the first step of any business entering into online media. For most businesses it is the principle means of interacting with their customers, whether it be used as a brochure or a full on e-commerce website, so getting it right is the really important. Of course, if you’ve got a bad website due to a low budget for its design, then it is good to know that all websites are a work in progress; it is a particularly fast changing form of interactive media, so whether you’ve got a good website now or a bad one, at some point in the future it will have to be changed, no matter what.

So what are the elements to a website’s design which are essential to your business? This depends largely upon what type of business you’ve got, but there are a number of elements which all businesses require to be successful:

All websites need to present themselves are trustworthy and dependable, but for websites which sell something this is particularly important. This is because there is a vast difference between providing payment details and providing a phone number, and the first one is guaranteed to cause greater angst in customers than the second one.

Creating impact and providing answers to queries are also essential for the two types of commercial websites. Impact is created by making sure that what customers and visitors are interested in seeing has prevalence on the landing page, often these are called calls to action, or CTA’s. Providing answers means formatting your site content in such a way as to ensure that visitors can quickly find the information they’re interested in; whether that means customer reviews, product details, or external validators.