If you have recently started a WordPress website or are looking to start one, you probably are searching out for things which are must have for any good website. One of such things are pages. Pages and post in a website are the fundamental way for you to interact with your audience. They are responsible for user retention, conversion, user watch time and many important parameters which helps to decide the success rate for your website.
It is therefore important to understand which are the pages and post you must have by default on your WordPress website to not only provide you a great head start, but also make sure that you are compliant with industry standards.
In today’s article, we will cover 7 important must have pages on your WordPress website. Without further due, let’s dive into the list.
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Home page (aka landing page)
The very first point of contact for any user is with the home page. Although home page is provided by default by WordPress, designing the home page properly is important. It should be minimal, follow the theme of the website and also display the best parts (or products) of website in a small and presentable manner.
Home page is also termed as landing page by many online. You can either design your home page on your WordPress website or use special landing page designing tools. Although for most people, WordPress landing page should be more than sufficient, if you are looking for better conversion or lead generation, you can sure consider external tools too.
On the other hand, If you are looking to build an email list for marketing, home page is ideal to provide a pop up or have a small ‘join our newsletter’ form for collection of email.
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About page
About page is a page in which you share about your website’s ideology, about yourself and anything you wish to share with your user related to the website. It is an information page for users to understand more about the website and feel more connected to it.
Although about page is not mandatory for any compliance, it is generally the first-place user will look for in order to learn more about you or your website. Due to this reason, it is more of a must have page on any website.
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Contact page
Behind any website, there is always a motive to be fulfilled for eg: Sharing your thoughts through blogging, earning income through affiliate, selling your product online etc. One thing which is common in all this different type of purpose is the need of getting in touch with others. Be it for paid advertising or to connect with your audience or be it a place for your customers to reach out regarding their query, having a contact page using which people can get in touch with you is a must on any website.
Contact page generally consists of an email, one paragraph text on how to reach out to you, your address and a form in which they can enter their queries.
An example of contact page is shown below
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Privacy Policy page
A Privacy Policy page is a statement or legal document for your website which states on how your website will handle their data. Privacy Policy page is mandatory for GDPR compliance and also for SEO ranking on search engines like google.
Drafting a Privacy Policy page which explains all the data collecting and handling on your website is mandatory and failing which can get you in legal troubles too. It is therefore important to draft the Privacy Policy page with care or outsource it to a professional.
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Disclaimer page
If by any means, you are aiming to earn money through your website, disclaimer page is a must. Although this page depends on whether you are earning through your website or not, it is still good practice to have this page even though you don’t aim to monetize it.
Disclaimer page generally consists of the information on how you would earn money through the website and what data would be used for the same. If you have a product or service selling website, you can use ‘Terms and Condition’ page instead of Disclaimer page.
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404 page
Similar to home page, 404 page is also provided by default by WordPress. Since this page is visited by user when they visit non existing page or post, this page is not taken up that seriously by many.
Due to this, many times, there exists a huge difference in design of 404 page and regular pages. These discrepancies can hamper overall look and feel of website and it is thus important to make sure that even the 404 page is designed to look like other pages of website.
One of the main advantages of having a 404 page is that even though, user may have entered a URL of non-existing page, it can guide the user to other pages of your website which helps you to avoid loss of traffic. You can also have a search box on 404 page which will further help user to find the right post or page which they were looking for.
An example of simple but effective 404 page is shown below
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Archive page
The very basic meaning of archive is collection of similar data at one place. In a similar manner, collection of multiple posts on a single page can be termed as Archive page. In an archive page, it is not necessary that it should only consist of post, archive page can also have archive of products, forums etc
Since archive page will have multiple posts on a single page, it is important that it displays each post in an efficient way. Generally, in an archive page, the post have their title, meta data, excerpt and at times, post image too.
Similar to home and 404 page, WordPress too provides a default archive page. One issue with the default page is the lack of flexibility and due to this reason, it is recommended to use plugins and widgets to design custom archive pages.
Conclusion
With WordPress, you can make ‘n’ number of types of content. But with all the types, these 7 pages are common. These pages are core of any website and it is therefore important to make sure you have all these pages in place with proper formatting and data on it.
Along with these 7 pages, WordPress website may need many other things to be done right in order to save time and efforts. If you want to learn more about such WordPress facts and tricks on how to select your theme, which plugin is right for you and many more such things, you should visit OnlinewithWP once.