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What makes a website great? Part Four – Final Installment
John R Ramos • March 17, 2020
Use clear navigation
Providing your visitors with a clear way to navigate your site is very important, especially as your business grows and you start to offer a large range of products and services. If you’ve thought carefully about your strategy and cut out unnecessary material from your site, the navigation bar should be obvious.
Your navigation bar should present the different sections of your site, and be arranged hierarchically so that customers can easily find what they are looking for and get to it in one click.
“Below The Fold”
Ten years ago, the perceived wisdom was that homepages – the first page a visitor looks at on your site – should be as short as possible. The thinking was that the homepage should essentially be an extension of your navigation bar, presenting customers with a range of options as to which page to visit next.
That advice is now obsolete. A recent survey of more than 230 B2C-focused websites by SurveyCool found that “roughly 82% of the surveyed businesses used one or more above-the-fold CTA.” Increasingly, the best sites are using their homepage more like the front page of a newspaper: to highlight their unique offering before customers explore the site further. The content you can put on your homepage can include:
- Value proposition
- Intro Video
- Overview of Services
- Product Features
- About Us
- Testimonials
- Case Studies/Success Stories
- Resources
Aim to include at least three of these items on your homepage, because this page offers you a free space to tell your customers what you think is most important about your company. Don’t be afraid, either, to have this page scroll – as long as the material is engaging enough, your customers won’t resent this.
Be mobile-first
Mobile optimization is now a must-have for every site owner. 80% of internet users own a smartphone, and large websites are seeing mobile traffic increase exponentially.
Optimizing your site for mobile can be a great learning experience as well. Because you have less space to fit your content into, designing for a mobile phone screen can help you think about what is important. As such, implementing this tip helps you to work toward some of the other principles on the list, like strategizing and cutting out unnecessary content.
You should also be aware, however, that encouraging mobile traffic should be done responsibly because it can undermine the security of your website. The number of cyberattacks launched from mobile devices has increased rapidly over recent years, and as your site expands you need to assess every new feature for its potential security implications. That includes mobile-friendly interfaces.
Check that your website loads fast and resolves properly on mobile using a mobile testing tool such as Screenfly or Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test.
Security
An often-overlooked part of building a great website is to make sure that your site is secure. This is particularly important when you are upgrading your site because making major changes can open up major security flaws.
There are a few key ways you can do that. You should be aware of the dangers of running unused plugins on your site and deactivate any plugins that you are not using. You should also make sure that you are using strong passwords for all parts of your site, and preferably using a password manager to generate and manage long, complex passwords for everything you do online.
If your site is used and updated by several different staff members, you should also take steps to ensure that they are not compromising its security. Use firewall protection and a virtual private network (VPN) to encrypt your internet connection. The best VPNs make it almost impossible for hackers to intercept your passwords and other sensitive information. This is particularly important if you work remotely because managing your website off-site introduce vulnerabilities into your workflow.
Testing, testing, testing
Never stop testing your site. A subscription to a web analytics tool is a worthwhile investment because it allows you to see in detail how your visitors are using your site. Tracking your customers’ “journey” through the buying process allows you to adapt your site’s design to improve conversion rates.
Sometimes these changes can be as simple as updating out-of-date landing pages to highlight new products. In other cases, testing your site allows you to see that your navigational structure needs to be improved.
The ultimate test of how “good” your website is the way that your customers use it. You might think it looks great, but unless it is generating traffic, engagement, and sales, it is worthless.
Be original
As I try to finish this article, I need to mention something slightly more complex, yet key elements of a good website. The first is that you should be original.
It can be tempting, after looking at the sites that are performing well in your sector, to merely copy their content. That is a very bad idea. Not only can customers spot the plagiarism, but they are unlikely to come back to your site: after all, they can get the information they need somewhere else.
Make sure that every piece of content you produce is original. Do as much research as you can and offer your customers something more than your competitors can.
Be yourself
Alongside being original, you should also use your website to highlight your personality. A powerful way of connecting with your customers is to draw on your company culture, creating truly unique pages.
Customers are increasingly drawn to companies that they can relate to as friends. That’s why many companies are hiring an influencer marketing agency. But you can also foreground your personality in other, simpler ways. Try injecting a little humor into your landing pages, for instance, or commission a designer to make you some stylish, unique graphics.
You aim to differentiate your company from your competitors. If you can make your customers feel that they are valued and that they are speaking to a real person as this goes a long way toward ensuring their loyalty.
And Finally
If you want to get involved in the designing of your website, you may want to create something with pen and paper as you discuss your needs with your web developer. You may think this is quite outdated but in the long run, it may turn out quite profound.
At the end of the day, the key to designing (or improving) a website is simplicity. The less you put on your site, the quicker your customers can find what they need. Your site is also going to be faster, more manageable, and more secure.
So, the bottom line is keeping your site design as simple as possible, while still providing your customers with everything they need, and you’ll be well on your way to a killer website.
I hope that if you have found these articles of value, that you would share them in your social media platforms. You are certainly welcomed to reach out to us if you want to have a free ½ hour consultation.
POST WRITTEN BY
John R. Ramos
The John Ramos Blog
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