What Makes a Good Corporate Website? Essentials and a Checklist

A good corporate website tells visitors on the first screen what you do and who you serve, loads quickly on a phone, offers concrete information that builds trust, and points the visitor to one next step (request a quote, call, fill in a form). Underneath sits a technical and legal foundation: measurable speed, accessibility, privacy notices and, for companies in Turkey that are subject to independent audit, the announcements section required by the Turkish Commercial Code. You can use the sections below as a checklist when you commission a new site or review your current one.

What is a corporate website, and what is it for?

A corporate website is a company's official digital address that explains who the company is, what it offers and how to reach it. Unlike an e-commerce site, it does not sell directly; its job is to build trust and collect enquiries.

An ad, a social media profile, a business card handed out at a trade fair, a supplier search: most of these end with the visitor arriving at your site and making much of their decision there. Search engines and AI assistants also read the basic facts about your company (what you do, where you are, which services you offer) largely from your site. That is why clear, current and consistent information matters as much as the design itself.

What should the first screen say?

The headline should say concretely what you do. "We manufacture and install commercial kitchen equipment" tells the visitor far more than "Your trusted solution partner". In the subheading, show who you serve and in which region, and below that a single main call-to-action button.

A mistake we often see is an auto-rotating slideshow on the first screen. Because every slide carries a different message, the visitor reads none of them fully. A single, clear message with a real photo behind it usually works better.

Which pages should a corporate website have?

• Home page: what you do, who you serve, why work with you and the next step.
• Services or products: a separate page for each main service. Services listed on a single page cannot appear in search engines for each service separately.
• About us: founding story, team, facilities, certificates and memberships.
• References or projects: client names you have permission to use and real project examples.
• Contact: address, map, landline, email, form and opening hours.
• Legal pages: privacy notice, cookie policy and, where required, the announcements section.
• Blog or news: only if you can publish regularly. A news page whose last post went up years ago leaves a worse impression than having no news page at all.

How fast should the site be?

Use metrics rather than gut feeling for speed. Under Google's Core Web Vitals, on a good page the largest content element (LCP) should appear within 2.5 seconds of the page starting to load, the response time to interaction (INP) should be 200 milliseconds or less, and layout shift (CLS) should be 0.1 or less. Google recommends meeting these values at the 75th percentile of page loads, separately for mobile and desktop.

In practice, the things that hurt speed most are oversized images in old formats, embedded maps, videos and social media feeds, a large number of plugins and weak hosting. You can track your site with PageSpeed Insights and, after launch, with the Core Web Vitals report in Search Console.

Why do mobile and accessibility matter?

A significant share of visitors to a corporate site arrive on a phone; this is especially clear in traffic from ads and social media. Design should start from the phone screen: readable text size, buttons that are easy to tap with a finger and a phone number that starts a call when tapped.

Accessibility makes the site usable for people with visual, hearing or motor impairments too. The international reference is WCAG 2.2, published by the W3C as a Recommendation in December 2024. Three rules solve most of the work to begin with: a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 between normal text and its background, a text alternative for every meaningful image, and menus that can all be used with a keyboard.

What builds trust?

• Clear contact details: a landline, a full address and a map. A contact form on its own does not build trust.
• Real photos: of the team, the office, the production floor or projects. Stock photos are noticed immediately.
• Concrete proof: certificates, memberships, references used with permission and completed projects.
• Freshness: a current copyright year, recent news and correct opening hours.
• Technical trust: HTTPS, forms that work properly and a cookie banner that gives visitors a choice.

What are the legal requirements?

The rules below apply to companies operating in Turkey; if you are based elsewhere, check the equivalent requirements in your own jurisdiction.

Privacy (KVKK): if you collect personal data through a contact or quote form, Turkey's personal data protection law (KVKK) requires a privacy notice explaining the purpose for which the data is processed. If the site uses analytics and advertising cookies, it needs a cookie policy and must give visitors a choice.

Turkish Commercial Code, Article 1524: this article requires capital companies subject to independent audit to set up a website and to dedicate a specific section of it to announcements the law requires them to publish. According to Turkey's Ministry of Trade, newly founded companies have three months from registration in the trade registry to do this; the details are set out in the Regulation on Websites to Be Opened by Capital Companies of 31 May 2013. Companies can build this section on their own site in line with the technical criteria or use an authorised central database service provider. Check with your accountant whether your company is in scope.

How do you set up SEO and measurement from the start?

SEO is not a layer added after the site is finished; it is built together with the page structure. The basic steps are: a unique title and description for every page, meaningful URLs, one main heading per page, logical links between pages, structured data describing the company, an XML sitemap and a Search Console registration.

On the measurement side, use a tool such as Google Analytics 4 to track not just visitor numbers but the actions that bring business: form submissions, clicks on the phone number, WhatsApp clicks and downloads of a proposal file. That data shows whether the site is doing its job.

How should the site be maintained after launch?

A website is not something you publish and walk away from. CMS and plugin updates, regular backups, SSL certificate renewal and form tests are the basis of maintenance. A situation we come across often is a contact form that stops working after an update and nobody notices for months. Filling in the form yourself once a month removes that risk.

On the content side, services, team and contact details should be reviewed at least every few months.

In short: a corporate website checklist

• The first screen says concretely what you do and leads to one action.
• Every main service has its own page.
• It loads fast on mobile; Core Web Vitals are measured.
• Contrast, image alt text and keyboard use have been checked.
• There is a full address, a landline and real photos.
• Privacy notice and cookie choices are in place; where required, the announcements section is set up.
• Titles, descriptions, sitemap and Search Console are ready.
• Form submissions and call clicks are measured as conversions.
• Someone is clearly responsible for maintenance and updates.

If you want to rebuild your corporate website along these lines, take a look at our web design service, and for search visibility, our SEO work. To review your current site together, get in touch.