In todays competitive business climate, your prospects and customers expect a lot from your website. Providing a professional look and feel for your business is a great start, but your site also needs to offer value added information which visitors can browse at their leisure. Not simply “brochure ware”, but real, honest to goodness ideas, opinions, engaging infographics and yes, information about your products and services.

However, there are certain site features which differentiate an industry leading website from a more amateur, “so-so” one and these should never be overlooked.

So which features are required?

• A mobile-version is a must: Some of the pundits of change predict that Web 3.0 will never come into existence because the Web is dead! According to them, just as there was a paradigm shift from the website to social networking, the next generation is mobile. That might be an extreme view but it rings with truth. Smartphones have become ubiquitous and the estimate of mobile-market growth is over 300% annually. In this scenario, not having a mobile-version of your website is a sure step into obsolescence.

• Social sharing buttons are a lifeline: It was the social networking revolution that led us to Web 2.0. Customers, browsers (potential customers) and even casual readers love to share anything that strikes them as interesting. It is the job of the website to facilitate this process in the quickest and easiest manner possible. Adding social-sharing buttons for sites like Facebook, G+, Twitter, Pinterest etc. makes sharing possible via a single click. Such sharing also promotes your website ranking in Google and others search engines.

• Include a blog as a part of your website to optimize your efforts: Every website feeds on the same thing – content. It is new content that brings in fresh traffic and engages the loyals. Thus, when it comes to “content”, a website should never be content! One of the smartest ways to get content is to incorporate a blog into your site. Whether its Google, Yahoo or Bing, great content is given top priority. Blogs also help the site to win quite some ‘link-love’ and backlinks too!

• An email subscription is an entry into the customer’s life: Ideally, your business should benefit from every visitor to the site. This may seem impractical because not every visitor buys something. However, instead of letting such instances be a complete waste, have ways to capture visitor’s email and contact details so you can start marketing to them at a later time.

• Make landing pages distinct from the homepage to help increase sales: When a site is monetized using Google AdWords, it’s always a good idea to direct visitors to a separate landing page. This page should be used to convey the sales message more effectively and to increase the conversion rate.

Even if one were to assume that Web 3.0 is dead, the above mentioned points are still vital for making the shift towards mobile and other devices. And though these features may sound basic, it’s surprising how many companies still aren’t there yet. So if you’re one of them, make yourself a promise that you’ll get them done in the next 30 days. The payoff will be significant.

Good luck!

This Content Launch blog post was written by Diana Maria, a well-known content writer. She loves writing, traveling and designing and is a big fan of Larry Page. These days she is busy writing articles on celebrity net worth.