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Business website design has come a long way in a short time. It can be very easy to overlook modern features that make your website more functional and effective. It's just as easy to focus too much on what's trendy and overlook proven design philosophy. The best business websites blend proven design and infrastructure with cutting edge features and tools:

1. Clarity

Concision is proven. A website must capture people's attention quickly. Give too much information at a time and it's easy to lose them. Give too little information and they'll shrug their shoulders. The most effective way to balance these two dangers is through clarity. Every element of your website should be defined by what's clear and consistent.

Commitment is cutting edge. The best business websites today go deeper rather than broader. They offer fewer options so that a visitor will make a decision and commit more quickly. Instead of offering further options or variations within that initial menu, those options might be presented later via a customization tool. This encourages earlier decision-making and commitment to exploring the site.

2. Consistency

Reliability is proven. You can't say one thing one minute and disagree with it the next. The easiest way to lose a potential customer or client is to appear inconsistent or confused. They want to view a brand as dependable. That means the messages and narratives coming from that brand also have to be reliable.

Transparency is cutting edge. If there's an element of your business that requires a complex explanation, then say that. Consistency can't be viewed as reliable unless it's also evidenced. While brand personality is crucial, there's also more wariness than ever before about trusting brands and their messages. The more you can prove transparency on a particular message, the more trustworthy you become.

3. Quality

Site design is proven. There are elements of site design that just work. Load quickly. A complex into page that takes 15 seconds to load means that your potential customers have already gone back and selected the next search hit. Graphical features that help guide the reading of a page helps a visitor understand the page better and trust it more. Clear, pointed information is easily digested and makes a visitor want to know more.

Content creation is cutting edge. If they want to know more, you have to provide more for them to know. Content creation comes in the form of blogs, video content, galleries, press releases, and more. These feature deep SEO content and are popularly shared on social media by followers. Content creation is a long-term investment. You can pay for the content once, and it will still be delivering SEO hits long into the future.

4. Apps

Management tools are proven. Anything that makes decision making about your website easier is advantageous to you. An e-commerce CMS can help you generate page links in a professional and reliable way. Managing and scheduling how and when something is shared across various social media spaces needs to be done from one central location. These all greatly reduce the back-end burden of keeping your online business running smoothly.

Analytics is cutting edge. Analytics tools tell you how customers use your website. This can help you become more efficient in your decision making. Where are customers clicking through? Where are they not? What content creation is really connecting? Is there a unique type of content that's getting shared in newer spaces where you normally don't have penetration?

5. Security

Website security is proven. You need to be able to protect yourself and your customers. That also needs to be transparent to your customers. The certificate verification represented by the green padlock in browsers is crucial to ensuring a customer that they're safe. Using secure payment systems that they're familiar with encourages them to feel safe making transactions with you.

Business continuity is cutting edge. Remember that all it takes for a small business to lose its customers' trust is one data breach or ransomware attack. If your business can't operate for a few days, that can make the difference between capitalizing on a popular post or new product launch. Business continuity means the site will still operate safely and securely even through an unexpected event. Small businesses don't need the layers of redundancy large corporations utilize, but they do need some level of swift and effective disaster recovery to rely upon.

6. Viability

Building for efficiency is proven. The best business websites are all efficient. They visually translate to a visitor how to use the site almost immediately. They load quickly and deliver what a customer is looking for. They fulfill expectations while still presenting new elements of interest that encourage and easily enable the customer to add to their cart.

Building for growth is cutting edge. Business website design must also plan for success. All it takes is the right product, a popular post, or a viral video to give your business that step it needs to grow. If the website can't handle the traffic, goes down without a backup kicking in, or fails in any other fashion, it can sabotage what you've worked so hard to accomplish.

You don't know when that moment of growth will be, so the site's design and the service you get from its managing agency should all be built to expand at a moment's notice. You want to be able to hit the ground running when you get that chance, and your website needs to be able to support everything you want to do in that moment.