Enterprise Website Design: A Definitive Guide to Must-have Features and Step-by-Step Process

Duke spent days designing his enterprise website, but the result wasn’t half as good as anticipated. The website is failing to drive traffic and is not meeting expectations. He worked well with marketing and advertising and laid out all the services on the website for the users to look through, but something isn’t still up to the mark. 

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What’s missing? An optimized website design for enterprises. 

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A website serves as most clients' first impression and plays a central role in taking your business to new heights. But all this becomes difficult without a proper website design. 

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Are you struggling with the same issues as Duke? 

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Let’s help you out here. 

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In this guide, we will discuss enterprise web design, the most important features to focus on in your website, and a step-by-step process for building it. Read on as we bridge the gap between your current website and the perfect website that maximizes user traffic. 

What is Enterprise Website Design?

Before diving into enterprise website design, let's define an enterprise website. 

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Enterprise websites are the websites of medium (100-499 employees) and large-sized companies (more than 500 employees). Their scale is far greater, and their features are more extensive than smalerl business websites.

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Now, why is it important? 

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The more comprehensive and well-crafted the enterprsie website design is, and the smoother its navigation, the better the customer experience. All your online marketing, search engine optimization, and social media efforts lead customers to the website. The success of your lead generation efforts ultimately hinges on the quality of the final website experience.

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Forbes found that the first opinion formed about a website is 94% solely design-related, and 88% of the customers are less likely to visit a website after they have had a poor experience. That is how important website design is! 

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So, if the potential customer doesn’t find your enterprise site appealing, user-friendly, or easy to navigate, they might lose interest and leave. 

8 Must-Have Features in an Enterprise Website

Enterprise websites are a communication channel between you and the customer. The better this channel and the more detailed its communication, the more effective it will be. 

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The user base on enterprise websites is extensive. That’s why the need for vast features, scalability opportunities, security, accessibility, and adaptability also increases.

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Below are 8 must-have features for your enterprise website that will help you strengthen it on multiple levels and make it a foolproof communication channel with potential clients. 

1. Ensure your website is scalable

To ensure an enterprise website is scalable, start with a modular design approach. For example, build independent components like navigation bars and content sections that can be updated or replaced easily. Implement responsive design to ensure functionality across all devices, from smartphones to desktops.

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Optimize performance by reducing load times. Use efficient coding, compress images, and employ content delivery networks (CDNs) like Cloudflare to distribute content globally. Select a scalable CMS, such as Webflow, which can handle increasing content and traffic effortlessly.

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Web designers must dopt a microservices architecture they design enterprise websites, where features like user authentication and payment processing operate as separate services. This allows individual scaling based on demand and makes it look like a professional website. 

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For instance, an e-commerce site can scale its checkout service during peak shopping seasons without affecting other components.

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Prioritize security and compliance to prevent scalability issues. Regularly update software and patch vulnerabilities. By integrating these strategies, such as using a CDN for faster global access and a scalable CMS for content management, an enterprise website can effectively grow with the business.

2. Prioritise website security

Paul Proctor, an analyst at research firm META Group, suggests that “Designing web applications securely from the start is key” because the cost of fixing security flaws after development is sixty times higher.

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Website security is important to keep your enterprise level website data safe and build your customers' trust. It includes all the safe practices that prevent the website from being a target of cyber threats and vulnerabilities. A small security breach is enough to make you lose customers. 

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That’s because compromised security puts customer data at stake too. 

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Consider the infamous SolarWinds data breach in 2020. This incident is famous for triggering a much larger supply chain than the company, including over 30,000 organizations. This data breach immensely affected the reputation of the company, and they had to pay $26 million to shareholders who maintained that SolarWinds neglected internal security. 

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You can also add two-factor authentication and educate your team about phishing scams.

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Additionally, ensure that your enterprise website has all the necessary security certificates. These include SSL Server certificates, SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificates, TLS (Transport Layer Security) certificates, and HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) certificates. 

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These certificates help with:  

• Data protection: The security certificates ensure data encryption to safeguard sensitive user information. 

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• Builds trust: When your users see an “https://,” they trust the website to be safe and credible. 

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• SEO benefits: Google favors safe websites, which can help increase your website's organic traffic and reach.

• Compliance requirements: Data protection regulations, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), mandate data encryption during transmission. Having the certificates helps ensure that your website is compliant. 

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• Protection and alerts: The SSL/TLS certificates ensure the data remains confidential and protect you from Man-in-the-Middle (MitM). A man-in-the-middle attack is when a hacker secretly intercepts and possibly changes the messages between two people who think they're directly communicating with each other.

3. Build a conversion focussed web design and architecture

The final goal of an enterprise website is conversion. You can achieve this if your web design makes it easy for users to find what they’re looking for. A conversion-focused web design must emphasize information architecture, which refers to the strategic organization of site elements. 

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The better the organization, the more easily viewers can find what they need and take the intended action.

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Features to focus on include: 

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• Page layout: A well-designed and organized page layout is crucial to make your website user-friendly, easily navigable, and visually appealing. 

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For example, here is the Hubspot website page. 

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They provide all the key options as part of their header to help users navigate easily. They also strategically give a peek into all the key features. This page layout is information-heavy yet very organized and pleasing to the eye. 

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• Labels: Labels help build a conversation between users and the website. These can include navigation labels, content categorization labels, accessibility labels, and even meta data labels. 

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For example, Freshbooks uses navigation labels such as invoicing, payments, accounting, etc to highlight the tool's different features and organize its content effectively. 

• Page titles: Page titles describe to the search engine and readers what is present on the page. They are important in making your website SEO-friendly. 

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Here is an example of Zapier’s page titles that describe the different web pages. 

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Customer journey maps can help you trace user actions and strengthen the website design by understanding the users' thought processes when interacting with your website and making improvements to keep them hooked. 

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Imagine a user lands on an e-commerce website, selects a few items to buy, and even adds them to their cart to be purchased together. Users are habituated to finding the cart option in the top right corner of a professional website like Amazon. However, in this case, they do not. 

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This can lead to frustration. Thus, such mental models are another thing to keep in mind here. 

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Additionally, keeping in mind the colors you are using is extremely important; the color of the CTA button must pop enough depending on the website theme color to highlight it adequately. 

4. Optimize for page speed

40% of users will abandon a website that requires more than 3 seconds to load. Doesn’t matter how intuitive a user interface you build. 

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Optimizing the page speed means implementing the best practices to make the

website as fast as possible. With everything at their fingertips, users like to have things done faster, and the quicker your website, the more they will want to engage with it. Conduct an audit and check the website speed to analyze your performance and identify the problem areas. 

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Some ways to ensure an optimized page speed are optimizing the images, minimizing the redirects and HTTP requests, compressing everything on the website as much as possible, leveraging caching, and optimizing mobile performance. 

5. Ensure your website is mobile-friendly

54% of the website traffic generated is usually through mobile devices. This underscores the importance of a responsive design. Moreover, Google favors your website once it is mobile-friendly. 

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The key factors that build a responsive design includes: 

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• Large and easy-to-read text in both horizontal and vertical screen orientations 
• Mobile-friendly navigation and touch-enabled buttons and page elements 
• Optimized image sizes and resolution to ensure the images load quickly and can be viewed at a glance
• Swipe, pinch, and tap functionality to make the website more accessible on mobile 
• Improved speed for mobile usage 

55.25% of sales take place through mobiles compared with desktops, so if you don't tap the mobile-user market, you will be missing out on more than 50% of your business sales. As a result, the web design must be compatible with mobile devices to have a favorable SEO, drive more users, and convert more leads. 

6. Build a library of good content

Listing products and services is no longer enough. 

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You need to educate your audience about your products, create a need by addressing their pain points, and show how you can serve them better than competitors.

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This is especially important for enterprise websites. Why?

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In B2B settings, purchasing decisions often involve multiple stakeholders and significant investments. These stakeholders conduct thorough research to ensure the chosen product aligns with their company’s needs and goals. 

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High-quality content, including detailed case studies and whitepapers, helps demonstrate the value and reliability of your products. It also helps you build a strong online presence.

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A content library, as a part of your company’s resources, consisting of videos, blogs, whitepapers, and case studies, allows you to provide in-depth information about your offerings. It adds value, builds trust, and fosters a human connection with customers.

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Moreover, newsletters are an effective way to share valuable insights and keep your audience informed about industry trends. This not only enhances your credibility but also positions your business as a thought leader.

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For example, Hootsuite, a social media management company, effectively uses content to educate users and showcase their expertise. They release reports on the latest trends and share case studies that highlight how their solutions benefit other businesses.

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Hence, a robust content library and strategic use of newsletters are crucial for educating your audience, building trust, and differentiating your business in a competitive market.

7. Optimize for search engines

You will be surprised that nearly 28% of clicks are on the top-ranking website, and the first 5 websites together receive almost 70% of the total clicks. As a result, ranking high is one of the best ways to get traffic and succeed.

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Without SEO as a part of your digital marketing strategy, your site won't appear in search engine results pages (SERPs), slimming your chances of building a web presence and gaining profits.

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There’s a directly proportional relationship—the higher you rank, the more people visit the website, and the higher the chances of conversion. Here are some ways to optimize your website for search engines: 

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Publishing content

Publishing keyword-optimized content that provides insights to establish authority and expertise is crucial. You must use multiple keyword phrases, on-page SEO, and SEO formatting. 

Metadata 

Metadata such as meta title, meta description, and alt tags is essential for enhancing search engine visibility. Additionally, you must update the meta tags from time to time to ensure relevance. 

Technical SEO

Platforms like Webflow offer built-in SEO tools to help you with this, eliminating the need for external plugins, often needed in tools like WordPress.

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Focusing on technical SEO, such as the website loading time, layout, clear site navigation, and mobile responsiveness, is equally important to ensure top rankings. 

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You can refer to the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Starter Guide by Google to gain valuable insights into how Google ranks websites and understand where you lack. 

8. Ensure accessibility

The last pillar of a successful enterprise web design is the website's accessibility. It must accommodate the needs of differently abled individuals, those with internet connectivity issues, and with age-related challenges. Meeting accessibility norms might be a legal compliance requirement in certain areas, but it definitely benefits your website by increasing its reach. 

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Ensuring accessibility to your enterprise site involves several key elements:

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• Use appropriate color contrasts to aid color-blind users.
• Add descriptive alt texts for images to assist visually impaired individuals using screen readers.
• Incorporate voice recognition features.
• Simplify layouts for easier keyboard navigation.
• Avoid time-limited content and interactions. 

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The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) judge websites on four grounds: perceivability, operability, understanding, and robustness. 

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For example, take the BBC website, which promotes accessibility on its website. You can use the tab key to skip to content directly and even get an Accessibility Help option. 

How to Go About Building an Enterprise Website? 

Now that we have studied the 8 key factors to keep in mind while designing the enterprise website, let us look at the process of building an enterprise website from scratch. Here’s all you need to do: 

1. Define your goals

Before you begin the complex process of building the enterprise website, define your goals. Whether you aim to establish brand authority, generate more sales, increase overall website traffic, or appear at the top of the search ranking, know what your website goals are. 

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Build your website structure and design accordingly. Set a theme that aligns with your brand goals and highlight your brand image. 

2. Choose the right CMS

Content is crucial for all enterprise websites to market products and services, build a relationship with potential clients, and also educate them. Choosing the right content management system (CMS) ensures that your website is supported by the right system. 

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Different factors to consider include CMS cost, business requirements regarding automation and personalization, ease of use, SEO friendliness, CMS hosting options, and integration with backend systems. 

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For example, Webflow is an extraordinary CMS that allows you to add content, structure it, and visually design it. 

It lets you build a custom layout from scratch and write and edit content as you like. With Webflow, you are not tied up with complex templates; you can create content and link it to any schema you like. Color, text, numbers, and images—it supports all kinds of content requirements. 

3. Build a sitemap

A sitemap simply provides information regarding the videos, pages, images, etc, on the enterprise website. It is crucial as it helps search engines find the website and understand the content better. 

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Here’s an example of a sitemap by Semrush

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There are primarily two kinds of sitemaps: 

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• HTML sitemaps: Also known as website archives, HTML sitemaps refer to the content sitemaps that website users see and use to navigate through the content.

• XML sitemaps: This sitemap is manually submitted and utilized for indexing purposes. It shows how the content is stored on the website. 

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Depending on which formats your website uses, you must have page sitemaps, image and video sitemaps, and sitemap indexes. 

4. Create wireframes and prototypes

Once you are done with the basics, focus on a crucial part of web designing—the user experience. 

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A wireframe in web design is a simple sketch of a website's layout, showing where things like buttons, images, and text will go. It's like a blueprint that helps plan the site before adding any design details. 

Source: Adobe Stock

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Wireframes are important for user experience because they help designers plan the layout and navigation of a website, ensuring it is intuitive and easy to use. By mapping out the structure beforehand, designers can identify and fix potential usability issues early in the process. You can use tools like Sketch, Figma, and Justinmind to build wireframes. 

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A prototype is an early version of a website or app that shows how it will work. It helps improve user experience by letting designers test how people will use it and make changes before it's fully built. Framer and InVision are two extraordinary tools that you can use to create website prototypes easily. 

5. Implement visual design

With the website structure in hand, the next step is to bring to life the website visual design that resonates with the brand essence. This involves bringing together images and keywords that convey the brand's voice and essence. Create a cohesive style for the website, including logos, headers, colors, patterns, visuals, copy, and key phrases.

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Design a unique website that stands out but remains well-organized. Focus on accessibility and easy navigation to ensure all users have a positive experience while maintaining a strong aesthetic that reflects the brand's identity.

6. Launch and maintain your enterprise website

Finally, when everything is in place, it is time to launch the website after running the final checks. However, remember that building a website once is not where your task ends. The website also demands regular upkeep and updation depending on the business requirements. 

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Some things to keep a check on as part of website maintenance are: 

• Update content regularly to provide value to customers and viewers, as outdated or irrelevant content might turn them away. 
• Periodically update security systems to ensure maximum security for users and the company. Adhering to changing security regulations is also equally important. 
• Monitor the website’s performance to identify areas for improvement, such as page load times, image optimization, customer engagement, etc. 

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In these 6 steps, you can launch your high-performing enterprise website with an optimized design and performance. 

Build Your Enterprise Business Website with Amply

Building an enterprise website requires considering multiple aspects, including the target audience requirements, security standards, page speed, SEO-optimized content, accessibility, etc. This might seem overwhelming, but not with the right partners by your side. 

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We at Amply house a team of Webflow, brand, and SEO experts to help you build the most promising enterprise website. We support you at every stage of the website development journey to bring your imagination to life and build a highly optimized, well-performing website. 

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Book a call today to seek assistance in narrating your brand story and making a B2B web design that converts. 

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