What makes a good website?
If you already have a website or you plan to develop one, you need to understand the characteristics that make or break the effectiveness of your online investment.
So, what makes a good website? What are the main characteristics of a good website, what should you focus on and what not to miss?
Appearance: A website must be visually appealing, clear and professional as it reflects your company, your products and your services image. A visually appealing website has a positive impact on your visitors and they are most likely to stay and navigate through your content.
Speed: Your website should load quickly. Speed is very important and Google loves speed. Did you know that 1 in 4 customers will abandon a page that takes more than 4 seconds to load? Page loading is obviously an important part in a website user experience.
Content: Relevant, original and easy to read content is key to a good website. Once your visitors enter you website, they need to know who you are, what you have to offer and what the benefits of becoming your customers are.
Easy navigation: Clear website navigation is obviously very important for your visitors. They must easily find the information they are searching for, they must not find obstacles or get confused during the purchase process or else they won’t finish the purchase process. Your website navigation has to be intuitive and easy to find.
Easy to read: Be sure that you make your pages as easy to read as possible. Most visitors don’t read websites, they scan them, and so it is very important to have a contrast between your background color and the text color. Stick with a lighter background a darker text color. Use headings to break up the content into sections and provide small blocks of text to help visitors read the content easier.
SEO: Basic search engine optimization is fundamental. If your website has no visitors, then it doesn’t exist and this cannot help your business. SEO helps you position your website properly to be found by your target audience. In order to be easy to find, write valuable content, make it easier for people to find it and share it, and link it to other platforms. SEO is an ongoing process, so keep doing it.
Tracking: Track and analyze what happens in your website. Get to know your visitors, where they came from, what caught their eye on your website, how much time they spent on certain pages. Good websites measure their traffic and their marketing actions efficacy. By analyzing your traffic and visitor’s behavior you will know how to generate better ads and retain more customers.
Link building: To help your SEO, link building is a very important step to be taken. Make sure that you link your website to other high quality websites: Google Local, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and so on. Make people share your content and submit articles to other industry related websites.
Searching: Offer your visitors the possibility of searching your website. Display a visible search button and help them find what they are looking for.
Simplicity: Keep your site simple and well organized. Allow for adequate white space and let your visitors focus on your message. Avoid overloading your website with animations, banners and pop-ups.
Mobile friendly: More and more visitors access web information from their mobile devices and it is important for them to have a positive experience, no matter the device they are using. If your website is mobile friendly you will benefit from: improved search visibility, better user experience and improved brand identity. Be prepared and have your website mobile optimized and welcome your visitors in a professional manner.
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