Today, it’s less about whether you have a website and more about how good your website is. Yet, “good” is a very subjective term that many business owners don’t understand in the sense that they aren’t quite sure of what metrics make a website “good” or “bad”.
Some business owners feel that as long as it looks impressive, then it’s a good website, whilst others feel as long as it provides all the required information that the website was created for is therefore good enough.
In this article, we’re going to look at what makes a good website “good”. Of course, you don’t need to worry about this if you’re using a professional agency like PXLPOD, as this way you will have your hand held throughout the process and can relax knowing that they know exactly what makes a good website good.
That said, many people today, are attempting to DIY their commercial websites which is why we’re going to take a look at a few aspects of what should be considered in building a website.
SPEED
Load times are critically important when it comes to websites, as people today have much shorter attention spans than they once did. Research demonstrates that if your website hasn’t fully loaded within three seconds, people are likely to click off or infer that your company isn’t particularly professional.
Many people developing websites use fast internet, but it’s worth being mindful of the fact that some people in rural areas or in developing countries might not have access to the internet speed that you are used to.
You, therefore, want to make sure you don’t have too many requests put on the server, or sizable content to download, such as too many high-resolution image files. If you do have lots of images to load it’s worth using tools to compress JPEGS into smaller files which will result in a faster load time.
CONTENT ARCHITECTURE
You want people to land on your home page and be able to find what they are looking for very efficiently, in simple and easy to understand navigation – which can be a challenge if you have a large e-commerce website. Take a look at Amazon and consider all the millions of products they have available on their site. It comes down to chunking content into categories and ensuring you have a powerful search function that delivers accurate results.
AESTHETICS
The design aesthetic of your website is important, as you can have a very fast loading website which is easy to use in terms of navigation; but if it’s an ugly or distracting design, people will feel less comfortable to engage with your website and consume the content on offer. You, therefore, want to make it as appealing as possible. In this sense, you want to think like a property developer that tends to present houses for sale in neutral colors with little injections of color; as taste is subjective, meaning you want to err on the side of caution and keep things reasonably neutral.