What Makes Up A Good Website?

How happy are you with your current website?

Go ahead. Take a good look at it. Do you feel like it represents your business well? Does it tell your story and showcase your values in a unique way that makes your business stand out?

Hopefully, your answer is "yes" to all of those questions, but if there's hesitancy, it may be time to look into an upgrade. Don't fall victim into believing that a semi-okay website is all you need. Many owners understand they need a website for their business which is good; however, some fail to realize what it means to have a good website and all the good that it can do for your business.

Well, good news! We're here to tell you exactly what makes up a good website and why you should choose to invest in one for your business.

Visual Appeal

For starters, your website needs to look good, not okay, not good enough, and not it'll do. It needs to be visually appealing to your audience or else people will get the wrong idea about your business. Your website is usually the first impression someone will get about your brand. Visitors will judge it instantly. If it lacks creativity or fails to reveal your brand in a unique way, people will click out of it as fast as they click into it. You will lose potential leads and your bounce rate will be high.

The big key here is that you want your website to be memorable. A good website consists of a beautifully designed theme that matches the market as well as the brand's personality. It's also important to note that a stupendous website on desktop should also look good on mobile. According to SmallBizGenius, people are more than 60% less likely to buy from a brand after a negative mobile experience.

Here's a quick exercise. Put yourself in your target audience's shoes for a moment. If you were looking for the product or service that you offer consumers and came across your website, would you be taken aback? Would you think it was a well-designed, user-friendly website and receive an instant sense of what the business is and what it represents? Head over to a few of your competitors' websites as well. Do you think their website looks better? Do you think a consumer would buy your product or service before your competitors by just going off the look and feel of the website?

User-Friendly

Another factor that plays into the design of a website is the user journey. In an effective user journey strategy, your goal is to make sure the visitor understands exactly where they want to go to reach their own goal. If they get confused on where to go to find what they need, this is problematic.

A good user experience journey starts with the home page. The home page needs to tell a story - the brand's story, for one. As a user scrolls through the home page, they should instantly get an idea of who the business is, what it does, the problem its fixing, why it's important, how to get in touch with someone, and how to buy the product/service. All of these elements are so important for the home page. The user should easily be able to identify how to navigate where they need to go for their purpose of being on the site.

If you're already thinking your website is in major need of an upgrade, go ahead and schedule a consultation with us here to get the process started. If you're still looking for more reasons why you need a better website, keep reading.

Improve Your SEO

SEO, also known as Search Engine Optimization, is crucial for success. According to Retail Dive, roughly 87% of shoppers now begin product searches online before making their final purchasing decisions.

If you're noticing your competitors are outranking you in SEO, your current website is typically the issue. For example, if you own and run a financial advisory firm in Atlanta and Google search: best financial firms in Atlanta, and your top 3 competitors come up at the top of the results page, your SEO game is not strong. And you are failing to get in front of our audience online.

Your website plays a big role in SEO. The higher your SEO ranking, the more visibility your business will get. To improve SEO, your website needs to be well-optimized. It needs to consist of keywords that relate to your product or service, quality backlinks, effective header tags, quality content, and should be mobile-friendly. Another thing to keep in mind is that Google search loves to see new, updated content to your web pages; thus, it gets factored into your SEO ranking.

Speed

Another attribute of a quality website is its speed. Of course, it needs to be fast. The attention span of people nowadays is around 5-6 seconds, so if your current website is taking its sweet time to pull up, that is not a good sign. Consumers are looking for information quickly and won't wait around to wait on a website to load. Instead, they will exit out of that browser and go back to another competitor's website to see if it's quicker.

One of the most common reasons for a slow website is the use of unoptimized images. High-resolution images usually contain a large bandwidth causing the page to slowly pull up as it tries to load the full image. For instance .PNG is a larger image size than that of a .JPEG. Exporting a .PNG image to a .JPEG could help speed up your webpage.

Final Thoughts

Our purpose for telling you all this isn't to persuade you to update your website just for the sake of a change. We want to educate you on how websites are ranked and what makes a good website a good website. A brand's website should ultimately promote what it does, why it's the best, show its personality, and get people excited to purchase the product or service!

Web design trends are always changing making it so imperative for businesses to keep theirs updated to not fall behind their competitors. If you believe it's time to invest in your website and your brand, let us know! We can help you transform your website in as little as 1 month. Schedule a consultation with us here.