Nikki Jefferson takes us through the 2nd part of her blog post about what makes a good website.
In Part 1 of What makes a good website we covered the first 5 points of what specifically makes a good website. Here are the rest of the points, from the point of view of our experiences and client feedback.
- Information Accessibility: Not all visitors to your website are interested in or have the time to peruse the entire site. They may need to access only a phone number or address, or just a certain bit of info. For this reason, it is important to place key information in plain sight, in an area that’s easily accessible.
- Interaction: An effective website design engages visitors immediately and continues to hold their attention through EVERY page, as well as influences them to contact you. This is called ‘conversion’ and is probably your website’s ultimate goal. Again, there is a fine line between interaction and annoyance, so the level of interaction should never outweigh the benefit. This can be different from CTA’s e.g. buttons to go to other pages of the site, to view gallery, etc.
- Navigation: Menu items should easily accessible from any page. The viewer should always know exactly where they are on the website and have easy access to where they would like to be. There is a fine line between an interactive menu and an annoying one, so functionality should be the idea.
- Visual Design: Scrolling text, animation, and flash intros should be used sparingly in your web design and only to emphasize a point for maximum effect.
- Cohesive Card Designs: With the more minimalistic website design style starting to take over, the use of cards has grown in popularity. Cards help visitors consume your content a little easier by grouping together text and imagery to form one eye-catching element. Bold graphic images are accompanied by simple titles to help inform readers what they can expect to read when clicking on one of their guides. Utilizing cards in your website design can help you attain a clean, organized look while keeping user experience at top of mind by appropriately sectioning off your content into bite-sized pieces.
- Branding: Your website should be a direct reflection of your business and your brand. We do this to create ‘familiarity’ and make the user at ease knowing that they are in the right place, looking at the right companies website.
- Social Sharing: A very fast and simple tool for comparing the number of shares your content and that of your competitors gets, across most social media networks. Useful for planning social media strategies and campaigns.
If you are interested in having your website reviewed and find out more about getting more business from Digital, please get in touch with our team.
