Throughout the years, as technology advances and online marketing has become a sure-fire way to get customers and leads, websites have become a great asset for businesses. Almost all successful businesses have websites but having a credible online presence requires a good amount of work and a lot of patience.
There are a lot of factors that can either make or break the effectiveness of your website. In this post we round up the things that makes a good website.
Appearance or Design
The number 1 on our list is the “website design.” The appearance of your website says a lot about your business and of course yourself as the owner. A website should always be visually appealing and professional. It may be the first and last impression to a potential customer.
Always remember that a website reflects you and your company. A poorly designed website doesn’t attract and impress potential customers as much as those who are beautifully and carefully designed.
Under this factor are the navigation, texts, graphics and colors used for your website.
Navigation of websites should always be simple, user-friendly, and easily-found. Visitors of your website must be able find any information they need quick and easy. Visitors tend to leave a website if they find the navigation too complex for them.
Texts should always be easily read. Do not use many different fonts on your website. Always use professional, simple fonts that can be easily-read by anyone and are supported by any type of computer systems. Font sizes matter too!
Graphics also play a big role in a design. Good, high-quality graphics make a great impression. They make a website come alive! Imagine a website with no graphics and just pure text – Boring isn’t it? However, you should remember that using too much graphics is not good too.
Colors are important as well. You should choose those which create a proper mood or tone for your business. Using too much color can distract your visitors from your website’s written content.
Unique Content
Aside from the appearance of your website, it must have substance. This substance we are referring to is good, credible and unique content. Your visitors or audience will be looking for information which will help them make a decision, so any content you add to your website must be informative, relevant and credible. If your website has a blog, it is very important to update your content regularly; this will keep your visitors interested to what new content you share.
The content on your website, aside from informative, must also be unique. Content plays a great role in SEO (Sear Engine Optimization). A unique content will help you rank highly in SERPs or Search engine results pages.
Functionality
Functionality is the third factor on our list. Your website must be fully functional, meaning every page, navigation and link should be working properly. Broken components such as broken links and poorly constructed navigation will only leave your visitors frustrated.
Speed
Fourth on our list is the speed of your website. Everybody deserves a fast web experience. A fast-loading website provides your visitors a great user experience while a slow-loading one can only frustrate them. This can also lead them not to come back to your website anymore.
There are many factors that affect the loading speed of a website. Some of the factors include server or hosting of your website, the codes and the graphics.
Quoting from MOZ Blog, “A fast site improves overall site quality and increases user satisfaction.”
Responsive Web Design
Fifth on our list is to give your website a responsive design. We could have included this to our #1 list but we decided to make it separate factor because nowadays, this helps to improve user experience.
Did you ever wonder what your visitors use to read your website? A laptop? A smartphone? or a tablet perhaps? This is why responsive web design is very important.
What is a responsive web design?
Quoting from Smashing Magazine, “Responsive Web design is the approach that suggests that design and development should respond to the user’s behavior and environment based on screen size, platform and orientation.”
Optimized for SEO
Last but not the list on our “What Makes a Good Website” list is that a website must be SEO optimized or in other words SEO-friendly. All the other 5 factors are meaningless without this.
What is the use of a pretty, fully-functional website, with fast-loading pages and good content if it cannot be found on search engines?
SEO helps your site get visibility in search engines. Visibility in search engines means more traffic to your website and the most important thing is that you can be found by potential customers. SEO has proved itself to be one of the most important components of any organization’s branding efforts and online presence.
