We all know it's no longer feasible to run a business without web presence. But for the majority of us, launching a business means facing a tight budget and every penny counts. You might think creating a functional and on-brand website is time-consuming and expensive but not necessarily.

Our preferred tool for website creation is undoubtedly Squarespace, an all-in-one content management system.

The good news is you don't have to be a designer to use it, you can easily set up something that looks sleek and professional from the get-go. There are several guides on how to use Squarespace online, but we thought it would be of greater value to share with you 3 things every website should have beyond of course a clear structure and intuitive navigation.

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1. A direct connection to your Instagram page

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Instagram is an amazing marketing tool. Often used to show the world your business persona and set its tone of voice, it does wonders in helping you achieve high levels of engagement and brand awareness. You can learn a lot about your business through Instagram metrics so it's in your interest to generate traffic to it as much as you possibly can. Not to mention that while a visitor might come to your website once, on Instagram they will be forever connected to you. It’s undoubtedly the best platform to forge an authentic and intimate connection with your audience — but to work well, it needs to be visually appealing. And if you have a great feed, make sure it stands out on your website. We typically place the Instagram grid on the home page just above the footer.

2. A click-through link to your phone number and email

It might sound a bit silly but you won’t believe the amount of websites without this. There’s nothing more frustrating than having to copy and paste a business’ contact info and into your phone pad or email. So in an effort to make a website experience as intuitive as possible, please make sure that your email and phones are only a click away.

3. Basic SEO knowledge applied

We are sure you heard of SEO before but if you haven't, fear not, because there's plenty of information online about it. Our first tip would be, of course, creating content that is relevant to your audience — our guiding principle here is “less is more”. The second tip one would be to be mindful of “Headings or H1/H2 tags”, which help visitors and search engines learn what a page is about and find the content that's relevant to them. Within a site's code, headings are automatically created with HTML heading tags, like <h1> or <h2>. Search engines look for these tags when they index your content. Since you don't need coding expertise to build a Squarespace site, you don't need to add HTML markup for heading tags yourself. This means that, and here’s our third tip, you have to consider all the possible key words that one might search for on Google that your website would be the answer. Then, keep those in mind when creating the copy. These key words can also be plugged into the pictures titles and descriptions in the backend of your website. What’s the point of having a well-designed website that is not easily discoverable, right?