A great website design accomplishes its goal of communicating its intended message while also engaging the viewer. Aesthetic components such as colors, font, imagery with other elements such as consistency, simplicity, and usefulness are all essential contributors to a well-made website.
There are several important aspects to consider while developing a website that will influence how it is perceived by your audience.
Making sure your website design is adjusted for user experience is key. A well-designed website may aid in the development of confidence and the prompting of visitors to engage.
Here are some key elements of a great website that will aid you in creating the perfect website for your business.
9 Elements Of A Great Website You Should Know About
1. Have A Clear Purpose
Before you begin to build your website, it is crucial for you to be aware of what purpose you intend your site to serve.
For instance, if you want to set up a website to sell your product(s), the ‘sales’ aspect should be your primary focus. Every decision you make needs to factor in whether or not it will help you grow your revenue.
A great example of this would be Facebook.
Initially, Facebook was created to be the social hub for college students across the United States. At that time, decisions were being made to make the website’s user experience seamless. New and exciting features were being added consistently to make the site the go-to place for online residents to socialize.
As time went on and Facebook became the behemoth it is today, its focus has shifted to achieving monetary results.
Paid advertisements have become a mainstay, and it has shifted its goal from simply being a social hub to a platform for business. It is now a marketplace, a streaming platform, & an exciting VR company amongst many other things.
Oh, let’s not forget, it is still a social media website at its core.
Facebook is so much more than what it used to be. Its transition is more pronounced now than ever, especially since it has now called “Meta”.
This goes to show that having a clear purpose in mind and working towards that end can result in meteoric gains for your company.
Moreover, your narrative must be accurate. It must be in line with what people desire and require. It implies you need to nail your site's search intent.
Discover how individuals might end up on your pages in a variety of ways and personalize your pages to address their questions.
Create a user journey from A to Z and strategically put your information. Pay attention to how you phrase your responses - you'll find that a social approach is what you're looking for in most cases.
2. Target Your Key Audience
In order to create a nice website, you must first figure out who will be using it. You may tailor your site to fit the individuals who will be visiting it, reading your blog entries, purchasing your products, or looking at your prior work if you know who will be viewing it.
Finding out what group your key demographic consists of is relatively simple.
First, evaluate the products or services that you sell. For instance, if your business sells gaming peripherals such as headsets, keyboards, and mice & GPUs, your key demographic is likely to consist of young people between the ages of 15-25.
One good technique is to create buyer personas for your target consumers to help you split them down into distinct categories. These are imaginary characters who represent a group of users.
Researching your industry is the greatest approach to construct these personalities, especially if you're new.
Here are some key tips to constructing a buyer persona:
- Examine other websites that are comparable to yours.
- Conduct surveys to find more information about your demographic or target demographic and find their preferences.
- Discuss your site, as well as its rivals, with family and friends to see what impressions they have.
With this knowledge, you may tailor your content to meet the demands of your current audience or to attract a new one.
3. Do Not Compromise On Security
Search engines and consumers alike are on the lookout for trust signals on your website. You need to provide reasons for people to trust your website and its content.
Downtime on a regular basis might indicate shoddy maintenance. An absent green lock indicator might indicate that you aren't concerned about security. They are on the lookout for a variety of little clues.
Google and other search engines strive to provide the best possible results to their users. If a search engine has any reservations about the claims you make, or if you hire shady 'experts' to confirm your information, they are increasingly unlikely to show it.
Furthermore, your website should provide a secure environment for visitors. You must ensure that your security is in order. You're not going to get far with a website that’s vulnerable to hacking.
A hacked site is also easier to avoid than retrieve. Utilize updated software, make sure your SSL is up to date, create secure passwords, and safeguard your site from DDoS assaults, among other things.
4. Incorporate Seamless Navigation
Websites that are successful have easy-to-use navigation. Visitors must be able to locate what they want quickly and easily.
Users will become annoyed and leave if they have to search the site for what they require. As a result, it's critical to add an easy-to-use navigation bar to your website.
You can consider introducing mega menus, also known as uber menus, depending on the size of your website and the amount of material. These menus go beyond traditional drop-down menus by allowing you to use columns to organize items in your navigation bar.
5. Good Design And UX
The design of your website should aid in the achievement of the objectives you've established. Your message should be conveyed in a clear & transparent manner.
The design should be consistent with the brand and well-planned. But, more significantly, everyone should be able to understand and use your site. You should not cut corners when it comes to accessibility.
It's not only about how something looks; it's also about how it feels. It's all about providing users with a positive experience that they will remember.
Users will be irritated if they have to wait too long for your pages to load because they can't see the content on your site due to the color scheme or can't press the buttons on your mobile site.
Jot down all the ways you can convert an annoying experience into a pleasant one. Moreover, satisfied customers are more likely to buy more products.
6. Optimized For Mobile
People are increasingly utilizing their phones or other gadgets to access the internet. It's critical to think about designing your website with a responsive layout that adjusts to multiple screen sizes.
If your site isn't mobile-friendly yet, you should make the necessary changes and focus on improving your mobile SEO. However, if your site has been mobile-friendly for some time, now is the time to consider making your future site mobile-first.
Although it isn't a new concept, most websites are still created with desktop users in mind. The designer manages to fit the desktop view down to mobile size after developing it, frequently losing its originality and vibrancy in the process.
Employing a mobile-first approach allows you to concentrate on the activities that your mobile site should be able to perform. It aids in the removal of clutter and, most often, allows you to create a minimalist and focused structure.
Your website must be mobile-friendly and well-designed; otherwise, you'll have a hard time attracting visitors, let alone converting them.
7. Great Content
When it comes to content, be user-centric rather than company-centric. Good content aids your users in achieving their objectives, and you want to provide it at the proper time while keeping the business objectives in mind.
As previously stated, you must first and foremost understand your user. Understand them, their behavior, and tailor your material accordingly.
The requirements of the audience should be the emphasis on high-quality websites. The material you provide should be clear and easy to comprehend, and it should be written in a language that the consumers are familiar with.
Make an effort to offer something new to the table. Conduct research and report on your findings.
Good, fresh content piques visitors' attention and encourages them to participate, introduce their friends, and return for more. You'll want to make sure it's interesting to read, and that the tone is constant.
Your users will be confused by your website if one page is written one way and the following page is written another.
Furthermore, Google rewards relevant and fascinating material for readers, so providing unique content is a wonderful method to increase engagement when it comes to building a decent website.
Ensure that your content is concise and easy to understand. If you're selling things, make sure your customers get all the information they need. Consider gathering testimonials from past clients and being explicit about the service your firm delivers if you're seeking to generate revenue.
8. High-Speed Load Times
Users do not want to wait for their content - they want the site to load immediately. A typical user expects a website to load in two seconds or less.
These days, most users are aware that if a website isn't fast and they're going to have to wait for it to load, they can simply click on another one that will. Anything longer than that, especially on mobile, raises the bounce rate significantly.
Graphics, video, and audio that have been optimized offer a website the performance it needs to load quickly.
A good website is crawlable and displays what search engines can and cannot index. There aren't many mistakes on good websites. An excellent website loads extremely quickly from any location on the planet.
Make every effort to ensure that the pages load as quickly as possible.
Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) comes in useful when it comes to reducing the time it takes for a website to load on a mobile device. This is a Google-backed initiative that aims to speed up the loading of websites on mobile devices.
Overall, when it comes to staying ahead of the competition, page speed is critical.
Technical SEO is also important, but you can get ahead of the game by mastering the fundamentals. Compress huge file sizes, tidy up your site's code, and debug your site's back-end to keep your loading times low and your users pleased.
Consider carefully which CMS you want to use and how you'll implement it. Choose a reliable hosting business that is both flexible and accommodating.
9. Optimized For Search Engines
A good website that receives little traffic is effectively invisible. SEO, or search engine optimization, will assist in attracting visitors to the site. It's also worth remembering that attracting suitable people is crucial to a website's success.
It's not only about attracting a broad audience - it's also about attracting clients who will see the value and in turn pay for your products or services.
There are tons of rules and recommendations for achieving efficient search engine optimization, here are a few to help you get started -
- Make sure that every page has page titles and meta tags, as well as alt tags for images.
- Optimize your website's content to include words that people (primarily your target audience) are looking for.
- Use keywords in your text and links in the right places.
- Keep your HTML code clean & clutter-free.
It takes time to see the benefits of effective SEO, but it will enhance your site and provide a return on investment (return on investment).
This is commonly achieved by employing techniques such as generating advertising campaigns, backlinking, regularly optimizing and promoting great content, performing keyword research to discover what your target audience is looking for, and even inspecting and cleaning up code.
Make sharing your material as simple as possible for your visitors. Social media may help you get a lot of visitors and improve your search results.
Conclusion
When it comes to determining what constitutes a good website, there are several aspects to consider. Ultimately, a strong website not only captures your target demographic's interest but also turns them into consumers.
You need to offer your audience what they want—a terrific user experience that will keep them coming back for more—whether it's by developing a gorgeous site or by optimizing your site's loading times.
If it seems daunting, you can check out PolyUno. PolyUno is a leader amongst web and app developers with a dedicated project management team. Book a call today!
