What Makes a Good Website?

Do you ever wonder how you can better your website? There are several things that make a good website, including design, branding, website development, and Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Website Branding

When it comes to website branding, there are three equally important things you need to know about: brand differentiators set you apart from your competitors; consistent brand visuals are helpful, but your brand is so much more than visuals; connecting with users is how you get traffic and leads to your site. Including branding on your website boosts your brand to people who aren’t familiar with it and gives you insight into what people are looking for on your site.

3 Types of Design

When redesigning a website, there are 3 types of design to keep in mind: behavioral, reflective, and visceral design. Behavioral design deals a lot with how users interact with your site: if a website takes too long to load or a user is unclear about what exactly your business does, they’re less likely to convert. Reflective design refers to users reflecting on a website after they’ve visited; why did or didn’t they convert? Visceral design refers to how a user feels on your website and the steps they need to take in order to convert. Design is a large and important piece to your website, especially when it comes to your users.

Web Development Challenges & Solutions

There are many web development challenges, especially because there are so many different types of challenges. A page might take a while to load on a mobile device, which falls under user experience, and web development is less about the user experience side and more about the buttons, text, and images on the page, and the challenges those elements present.

Use Both Technical SEO and Content SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) helps your website rank higher on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP), which brings more people to your site. The higher your site ranks, the more likely people are to visit it.

Two important areas of SEO include Technical SEO vs Content SEO:

• Technical SEO makes sure users see your site and are interested in coming back.
• Content SEO includes keyword research, blog posts, and the structure of your site.

Adding technical SEO and content SEO onto your site (and keeping up with it) will improve your site’s ranking on the SERP and will increase traffic to your site.

Improving User Experience

Improving your user experience and user interface design is very important for your business. Doing this will help your business connect with your users and build word of mouth. It would also be a good idea to look at your analytics, which will give you insight into where users are dropping off in the sales process and/or on the site overall.

Improving user experience can be done by looking at analytics. Set a time each week or even each month to analyze analytics. Are they dropping off before they can purchase an item or leaving a blog post only a few seconds after clicking on it? These are the kinds of things you can spot by consistently looking at your site’s analytics. It won’t be as beneficial to your business to look at analytics once a year or sporadically, because user experience changes, and you want users on your site to have the best experience they can.

What to Look for in a Web Design Agency

Are you unsure what to look for a web design agency? It’s an overwhelming process, which is why we’re here to help. There are three important things to look for when you’re choosing a web design agency:

• Process

Does the agency you’ve found have an established process that they talk through with potential clients? How communicative will they be throughout the process?

• Reviews

Are their reviews available only on their website (and have they curated to only show the best ones?), or does this company have reviews anywhere else?

• Trust

Trust is a two way street: you want the company you choose for your website to trust you as much as you want to trust them. When you talk with them, are you feeling that trust? If not, it is a sign that that particular company isn’t the best fit for you and your website.

Conclusion

This is a fraction of what makes a good website, but will help you if you are doing a rebrand or you want to know how to increase traffic on your website. If you liked this blog post and are looking for an agency to help with your site’s redesign, contact us.