7 Key Things Your Website Might be Missing

7 Key Things Your Website Might be Missing

When launching a business or website we get so excited about finding the right website theme, web hosting, photos, and creating the most appealing content that we forget about some very key components. We review our site a billion times to ensure that it is perfect, but is it really perfect? I’ve listed 7 key elements that you may want to make sure you have on your site.  

Bio

“People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.” Let your buyers and audience know who you are. Share your why and give them some insight on how your brand came to fruition. What good is a brand if no one knows anything about you. When others know your story it makes you more relatable and helps you reach your target audience.

I’ve come across some amazing brands and when I go to email them for potential collaboration opportunities, I have no idea who I’m emailing because they’ve failed to make themselves known. Your bio and location alone can help increase your number of collaborations and clients locally.

Tell the world:

• Who you are

• Where you are from

• Where you currently reside

• The story behind starting your business/blog

• What did you do before you became an entrepreneur/blogger

• What are you passionate about

• What do you like to do in your spare time

• Share some fun facts

Remember, people rarely invest in strangers. You have to build trust and loyalty with your audience. Let them know who you are so they can not only connect with your brand but you as a person.

Headshot

I love to put faces with names and seeing someone’s photo along with their story makes me feel like we’ve already met. Be sure that you include a professional photo. No selfies, photos in the car with your seat belt showing, or photos with a bunch of random things in the background. Those are all big NO’s.

Hire a professional to take head shots or if you are on a budget consider bartering. If you have a camera and a tripod you can take your own photos. With bomb filtering apps like Snapseed and VSCO, you could honestly take photos right from your phone. High-quality images are key!

Contact Information

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried to contact a brand for a collaboration, partnership, speaking engagement or just to connect and they didn’t have a contact form OR email address anywhere on their site. You are missing out on sooooo many opportunities.

I know some people don’t like to add their email address because they get bombarded with SPAM, they magically receive newsletters from sites they’ve never even signed up for and for whatever other reason. If this is you, fine. Create a contact form that people can complete and you’ll receive an email confirmation for each submission.

Terms of Service

Terms of Service (TOS) are rules displayed on your site that users and customers must abide by in order to use your service or use your website. Honestly, you can include these in your disclaimer. Typically TOS are much longer than disclaimers and some people choose to keep them separate. TOS state that you are the owner of the content, limits liability and prevents abuse of your service.

Your lawyer can assist with creating the appropriate TOS for your website or you can use a free online generator.  

Privacy Policy

Have you ever wondered why you always get those emails from your credit cardholders informing you that they’ve updated their privacy policy. I bet you never really read the long legal document either. Well guess what? You website needs a privacy policy disclosing how you collect, store, and manage your customers personal data. This is a legal requirement expressing that whatever personal information you collect from your client will be kept confidential and not sold to any third parties.

Your lawyer can help you create a privacy that fits best for your brand. You can also generate your own privacy policy with free online generators like freeprivacypolicy.com.

Disclaimer

A disclaimer protects you in regards to the users who view and use the content on your website/blog. It sets the limits of liability and basically tells users and customers to use the content and information you provide at their own risk. Your disclaimer can include that you are not liable for the results experienced by those who have taken the advice you’ve provided on your website/blog. A disclaimer basically relieves you of responsibility as long as you have the proper language displayed.

Let’s say a person reads your blog post on How to Make $100,000 in 1 Year and after a year they haven’t made six figures and they want to sue you. As long as you have the proper legal jargon included in your disclaimer on your site, you are not responsible for their lack of results.

Again your lawyer can assist with creating the appropriate disclaimer or you can use a free online generator.

Return/Cancellation Policy

When you’re out shopping at your favorite stores, the return and cancellation policy is always either at the bottom of your receipt or on the back. When you purchase something it is important to you to know if you can return or exchange it. If you sign up for a service or membership you are always made aware of the cancellation policy. If you are selling products and services your customers need to be aware of the return and cancellation policy. This could really hurt your brand in the long run if you aren’t able to make an unhappy customer happy due to your lack of information provided. You may also lose potential customers if you don’t have this policy on your site. Believe it or not, I actually look for these policies on sites when I shop.

Policies are very important to you, your brand, and your customers.

Have fun updating your site with these key components. You can totally get these things completed in no time. Feel free to share this post with your business bestie, entrepreneur, and blogger friends who could use these tips to update their site.