If your business is online, which it should be in today’s digital age, you must have wondered at some point, what makes a good website?
And today, we will take you on a journey to figure that out. But before we jump right into it, let’s start with a quick fun fact.
Do you know that there are around 2 billion websites on the internet? And the chances are that with so many businesses and brands taking the digital route, yours can get buried real quick.
So, how do you ensure that your website:
- Attracts traffic and your target audience
- Helps with lead conversion and sales
- It doesn’t become just another number
In short, what makes a good website? Let’s start!
What Makes A Good Website: The 7 Principles of Web Design
In this section, we’ll be discussing the 7 essentials or principles of design to elaborate on what makes a good website.
Remember, the more you focus on enhancing these features and making them align with your brand, the better your website will look and perform.
Let’s look at them one by one.
Website Purpose
Before you create a website for your business, ask yourself the purpose behind it. What do you aim to achieve with the presence of the website? More importantly, how will you accommodate your target market’s needs through your website?
That is the purpose of a website, and it’s crucial to creating a great one.
Now, there can be several different purposes behind a website. However, here are the 4 major ones:
Describing your expertise
This is mostly used by consultants, authors, agents, or managers.
Building your brand repute
Both individuals and companies can have this purpose for the sake of growing their brand.
Lead Generation & Sales
You need to ensure that your website is optimized properly and direct your user towards making a purchase.
Community Building
This is mainly to get more traffic. You can then leverage this to sell more products or start affiliate marketing.
The Aesthetic Appeal
If your website stings your creative side and there seems to be something off visually, you know it’s time for a change.
That’s because humans are visual beings. We like to interact with what we see, and that’s why your website has to be visually attractive so more people can engage with it.
This includes choosing the right color palette and the right logo design. Everything determines your website’s overall aesthetic, from colors to typography and even your website’s layout.
My advice would be to start with a great brand book first. Only when you’re clear on your brand image will you be able to crack the code of what makes a good website!
User Experience & Journey
How would you feel if we were to throw you in a maze without a roadmap or structure to follow? On top of that, we wouldn’t even tell you the objective or reason you’re in that maze.
Well, I’ll take a guess and say you’ll feel pretty frustrated and lost, right?
That’s exactly how users feel when they open a messy and complex website with an unclear purpose.
So how do you make sure that they don’t feel that way?
The answer is simple; by focusing on enhancing the user experience and journey. And the best way to do that is by creating the website from a user perspective.
Make sure that your website has a clear purpose in the header. It would help if you also kept the navigation intuitive and consistent. Don’t keep vertical navigation on one page and then horizontal on the other. That might end up confusing the user.
And finally, focus on creating a visual hierarchy throughout the website. This includes keeping all content, images, and typography in a hierarchal structure, with the focal point being your call to action (CTA).
Simplicity
Simplicity doesn’t necessarily mean that your website should be plain and boring.
It means that the layout should be simple and easy to follow to enhance the user experience. This essentially allows the user to understand the purpose and content of your website more easily.
And remember, winning over your customer as quickly as possible should be your main objective. A complex and chaotic structure can overshadow that.
So instead, opt for simple layouts that are easy to follow.
Loading Speed
You’d probably agree that nobody likes waiting. Even in real life, we find creative ways of skipping the queue somehow, and that behavior translates to the digital world.
If your website is too slow or takes up too much time loading, chances are people will close the tab and move on to an alternative. That’s because there are literally thousands of other websites that would load faster.
So if you want to really know what makes a good website, an important constituent is the loading speed.
Make sure that you don’t lose out on potential customers because of a slow loading website. Optimize your web page, alt tags, and images to ensure that the speed is faster!
Mobile Friendly
More and more people are using the internet on their mobile devices now. That’s because portability and accessibility are becoming the most sought-after features in any brand or business that’s online.
And that is a leading reason why your website should be mobile-optimized. It should be easy to navigate and responsive for users viewing it on their mobile devices.
Original & Unique Content
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the process of ranking higher on search engines. This is crucial to your website’s overall health as it allows more visibility and leads to more conversions. And one of the best ways of improving your website’s SEO score is through original and unique content.
Compelling copywriting and impressive blogs that are informative would help bridge the trust gap between your brand and the audience. It would also help spread the word of your brand around. However, lousy and plagiarised copies or ideas wouldn’t get you anywhere.
So make sure that you write creatively and keep the brand image intact!
Key Takeaway
Cracking the secret code of what makes a good website lies in understanding what your target audience wants.
If you follow the principles that we’ve discussed above, your website will be good to go!
Just remember that it’s all about the user and how accessible your brand can become for them.
