What Makes a Good Website?
March 12, 2019
A good and attractive website catches your attention, wakes up your emotions, and gives you what you need.
The most important asset of a business is its website. Having a credible, professional, and engaging online presence requires work and patience. Getting your business online is one of the best things you can do to reach new and potential customers.
There are currently over 600 million websites in the world. Making a website has become an easy and manageable task, so how can you stand apart from your competitors?
Strong and Clear Message
Think about what your website does or what you want it to do. In order to have a successful and engaging website, it should have a simple and clear message that all visitors can understand. The best way to communicate your website’s purpose is through a clear message. Use fonts that are easy to read and are found on most of today’s computer systems. This will also help search engines categorize your website for appropriate phases and keywords.
Retain Visitors
Informing visitors is just one part of the equation for a good business website. You want to make sure that visitors are also staying on your site long enough to take action. The first step to keeping visitors on your website is to make it an easy and pleasant experience. Here’s how.
Easy Navigation
The important feature of a good website is navigation. With simple and user-friendly navigation, visitors must find everything they need quickly and easily. If the users have to wander around the site trying to find what they need, they will get frustrated and leave. Some website owners fail to include well-structured, clear navigation tabs that lead visitors to relevant sections.
Think of the general path you would like a site visitor to take. Organize the information on your website in a simple and structured way. Adding sub-pages to the top of the navigation will be the best option for organizing your information into specific categories.
Responsiveness
Another way to create an easy and pleasant experience for your visitors is to make your website responsive. A responsive website is one that automatically adjusts its display for all devices, such as laptops, tablets, iPhones, and more. This makes for easier navigation and engagement with your website, no matter where or how people are accessing it. While your responsive website will appear the same across all devices, it may be best to optimize your site for mobile and tablets, as these are the most commonly used devices for online search today. Visitor retention is just one of the many benefits of a responsive website, so be sure to make this a characteristic of your website!
Content
Relevant Content for your visitors is the main function of your website; it helps them understand the problem that your products and/or services solve. Make sure that the content that you add to your site is displayed in a unique, simple, and clear manner.
Your site must have substance. The user or audience is always looking for information that will help them make a decision, so it should be informative and relevant. To increase visitor confidence in your company’s knowledge and competence, you may use this opportunity. You must update your content regularly because no one likes to read the same thing over and over.
Colors
Complementary colors create balance and harmony. Contrasting colors for the background and text will make it easier for the eye to read. A well-thought-out color palette can go a long way toward enhancing the user experience. The most effective way to give your website a modern and uncluttered look is through white space or negative space. An appropriate color scheme will contain 2 or 3 primary colors that blend well and create a proper mood or tone for your website.
Images
Meaningful pictures and choosing the right images for your website can help with connecting with your target audience and brand positioning. Choose high-quality, professional photos.
Speed
Optimized graphics, audio, and video give a website the speed it needs to load quickly. The users don’t want to wait for a slow website or content to download; they need their information quickly and without any delay.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
If you don’t have Search Engine Optimization (SEO) on your great website, your website is invisible. SEO, or Search Engine optimization, will help bring an audience to the website. It is also important to consider that bringing in relevant users plays a key role in the growth of a website. It is not just about establishing an audience; It is about bringing in potential customers that will pay for your services and appreciate them.
Even if you have a great or interesting website, it doesn’t matter if users can’t find it. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the website optimization process that makes the website show up in search results for specific keywords. The more optimized the website is, the higher its ranking in search engines will be.
Here are some of the actionable takeaways:
Know who you’re targeting and perform keyword research. Optimize your site pages with on-page SEO targeting those keywords. Create a strong sitemap for Google and Bing to index your site.
These three tactics will get you well on your way to showing up in search results.
Mobile Friendly
This fits in with "easy to navigate", but it’s so important it deserves a mention of its own. Mobile users now account for well over 50% of all website visits.
That means if your website isn’t mobile-friendly, you risk giving a bad experience to the majority of your website visitors.
Having a mobile-friendly website is also increasingly important when it comes to search engine optimization, so there are two excellent reasons for ensuring your site is mobile-friendly.
If you plan on using a web designer, then they should already be aware of the need for mobile-friendly sites (and if they’re not, then you should probably avoid them). If you use a website builder, make sure the templates it provides are mobile-friendly, and the same applies if you’re building your site using a platform like WordPress.
Functionality
The site should function smoothly, or it will cause frustration from your end users and cause them to leave your website. Things to consider are the load time of your website and making sure links aren’t broken or missing pages.
Usable Forms
Forms are a very important element on business websites. They allow users to interact with the site. Forms are also very useful for generating leads for a business.
When designing usable and useful forms, please consider these practices.
- Use the correct labels for all fields.
- Follow good design principles.
- Try to keep the number of fields to a minimum.
- Offer tooltips and suggestions.
- display an on-screen message about the competition.
- Use the correct validation.