The Six Basic Pages Every Website Should Have
There are 6 basic pages each business website should have, most of which are required by law. Not having them may result in visitors to your site becoming suspicious and quickly going elsewhere, leading to the loss of potential new customers.
Terms and Conditions/Terms of Service
Any good business website needs to have a page called the Terms and Conditions/Terms of Service. This page should talk about how you offer your services, under what conditions and terms, to whom, where and more. It is usual to place a link to it at the footer of your website and make sure to name the link Terms and Conditions or Terms of Service.
Privacy Policy
It is important to have a privacy policy for your website even if you do not collect an email address from your visitors. Privacy concerns include website analytics, such as Google Analytics and website cookies. Both analytics and cookies store a certain amount of information about your visitors. It is usual to position your Privacy Policy page next to the Terms and Conditions/Terms of Service page in the footer or include this information in a separate section within the Terms and Conditions/Terms of Service page. Again make sure you name the link Privacy Policy.
Cookies
As mentioned cookies store information about your visitors and it is now a legal requirement for websites that use cookies, which, let’s face it, the majority are these days, to not only bring this to the attention of visitors to their site but also explain how they are used and ask them if they want to accept them. This information must be visible in a prominent place on your website and be visible to every new visitor, whichever page they land on. For this reason, it is usual to have this appear in a pop-up window. However, whilst it should be clearly visible make sure it is positioned in such a way and is of a suitable size so that it does not detract from the overall “user experience” that you have worked hard to achieve for your site.
Contact Us
The Contact Us page is one of those pages that is important but often overlooked or struck on as an afterthought. When you sell something, provide services, etc., you want to convert your visitors to customers. Visitors need a way to contact you for sales enquiries and general questions, or concerns and most will look for a separate Contact Us page. So make one and make it easy to find on your site and easy to navigate. Your Contact Us page should display your email address(es), telephone numbers and your business address. A location map and details of your opening hours are also useful to include for businesses that have premises that are open to the public/trade.
One tip, if you also decide to include a contact form give visitors the option to send a copy of their message to themselves so that they have a record of when it was sent. It is imperative to make sure these contact form messages are sent to an email address which is actively monitored so that messages are replied to promptly. If you do not have the resources to respond promptly then having one of these forms will do your business more harm than good. So think carefully about whether to have one or not and if so, to which email address these messages will be sent.
About Us
The About us page should sum up what you do, who you are, and why you do what you do. People will want to read this sort of information when they are undecided to make an order, or before they want to get in touch with you. Make it clear and concise. It is also useful, particularly for small businesses and makes it more personal to have photographs and information about key members of staff but make sure that they give their consent first.
Frequently Asked Questions/FAQ/Q&A
A Frequently Asked Questions or Questions and Answers page(s) can save yourself, as well as your visitors, valuable time. The information should concentrate on the most frequent questions and concerns your visitors are likely to have. Use your own experience and past enquiry history to guide you in setting up this page. An additional useful source of likely questions is the FAQ pages of your competitors and suppliers. Whichever way you chose to build this page up, the information provided must be easy to find, relevant, simple and straight forward. It is particularly important that any associated search facility brings up only and all of the relevant FAQ and their answers.
For eCommerce websites, there are of course other essential pages in addition to the above, details of will be covered in other tutorials.
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