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Every reliable web development company understands that a company's website has a direct impact on the company’s business, either positively or negatively. So, it is your duty to engage your web development company on how your website will boost your lead generation and conversion rate.

On that note, here are some of the features your web development company must include in the design and development of your website.

Search engine-friendly structure

Most web development companies are concerned mostly with developing visually appealing websites, but only very few of them focus on the website's structure. Only the most experienced few web development companies realize that certain structures are difficult for search engine bots to crawl, which lowers the ranking of such websites.

If you have such a website, running your marketing campaign will amount to fetching water into a leaking bucket – 3 steps forward and 1 step backward. So, it is important to have a web development company evaluate the structure of your website. You may need to revamp your website totally if necessary.

Adding visual content

It has been confirmed that images and videos boost credibility and trust, increasing rates of lead generation and conversion. Besides, search engines rank websites with videos higher than others. For these reasons, it is necessary to upload a few videos and images on your site.

Make use of chatbots

Anybody that takes the time to make inquiries about any of your products is a lead that can easily be converted. However, you may lose the lead if your response comes late. In fact, prospective customers are usually impressed when they receive an instant response to their inquiries. To achieve that, several companies make use of chatbots.

These bots do not only respond to customers’ queries, but they also notify visitors about new products and promotional offers. They are usually able to answer virtually all questions related to the company's business that owns the website because huge databases of information support them. Nevertheless, it is still possible for a customer to ask a question that the website’s chatbot cannot answer. In that situation, the chatbot will provide the enquirer with the following options.

• The chatbot will display a phone number that the enquirer can call.
• It will also give him the option of dropping his email address and phone number for feedback.
• He may also check back in 24 hours.

Regardless of the enquirer’s choice, the bot will send the question to the back-end so that its database will be updated with the answer to the question within 24 hours.

Well-organized and clear menu/navigation

To make your website easy to navigate, it is necessary to have a well-organized menu. Visitors usually spend a few seconds on a website before deciding to browse further or leave the website. It is needless to say they will leave if they find your website difficult to understand.

It is also important to include a search function on your website's home page so that visitors can use the function to have quick access to their products of interest. In other words, you need to make your website very easy to understand and navigate.

Easy checkout process

Another common challenge with sales is abandoned carts. Prospective customers abandon their carts for several reasons. It could be that they found a better deal elsewhere after adding products to the cart. It could also be that they are not comfortable with the available payment options. Another common reason for abandoned carts is wrong up-selling and cross-selling time.

To make your customers complete their orders, you need to provide as many payment options as possible. Secondly, never up-sell or cross-sell after the customer has hit the checkout button. The best time to do all is when the customers are still checking out one product or the other and still adding products to the cart. Immediately customers click the “checkout” button, and they expect to see only payment-related information. Any other kind of information may annoy them. So, cross-selling at this point is a safe bet for cart abandonment.

Information on the benefits of your products

In the process of marketing products, most companies dwell more on the features of their products. Customers don’t care about this. They are only interested in how those features are of benefit to them. Listing features alone is meaningless. You need to tie every feature to a benefit.

Saying Product A is made of stainless steel cannot sway any customer. Instead, it is better to say since Product A is made of stainless steel, it is resistant to rust and corrosion, thereby offering little or no maintenance cost. The second statement will make more sense to prospective customers.

Talk about the distinctive features of your products

Due to competition in the corporate world, it is no longer enough just to mention your products' benefits. You also need to include the advantages they have over close alternatives. No matter what your products are, your competitors will also offer the same kind of products at about the same price. So, it is possible that the products of your competitors also offer all the benefits yours offer. This is why you need to mention the advantages your products have over others.

Contact information should be on every page

A call to action and your contact information should be at the bottom of every web page. Your customers may want to reach you. The earlier they see your contact information, the better. A customer may change his mind while looking for the page that has your contact information. To avoid that, you should place your contact information on every page.

Every site should have an “elevator pitch”

You must have an elevator pitch on your homepage. You need to present your business on your homepage as precisely and briefly as possible to make any visitor dig deeper into your website.

In conclusion, there may be other features to make your website a marketing tool, but you are good with all the ones outlined above if you take the time to apply every one of them.