What makes a website GOOD or Bad?

Chances are you have surfed the internet and stumbled across many types of websites. Maybe something informative while researching a topic, or even A new hip brand that everyone is raving about. Have you ever thought to yourself, “ I really like how this website is laid out”. It could be the purpose was easily stated, the website was esthetically put together, or even the useful content. As a business owner we have to ask ourselves, what makes a website good or bad? This is a very in depth question that has been covered by hundreds of books and courses over the years. There are some consistent principles that are imperative to creating a good website that serves your business and your customers.

When launching a new website or website redesign there are 4 major factors to keep in mind.

1.PURPOSE

Starting with a clear intention or purpose for the entire user experience from the home page across all your inner pages, blogs, portfolios and products. This will help you keep your content and messaging clear and easy to engage for your users. Having clear intending on your website makes it easy to read and index with the search engines such as google, bing, and yahoo.

2. VISUALLY PLEASING

In this day and age web users expect to see websites that are aesthetically pleasing and modern. An attractive website is going to keep the attention of your audience. It’s no different than showing up to a jobsite in a beat up truck. First impressions are everything. If your site looks like it was built in the 90’s your customer will judge your site and the legitimacy of your website. It’s 2022, People have options and your website will continue working for you when you’re off the clock.

3. ORGANIC CONTENT

Creating custom content helps share a tone or voice of your business. Your content should be relevant to your industry and target audience. A good rule of thumb is to write content for your ideal customer. Answer their frequently asked questions and alleviate general concerns they may have within each of your pages. It is illegal to plagiarize content from other websites and google will penalize your site in the search rankings if your content is found to be a duplicate from another site on the web. Taking your time to voice who your business is, what you’re doing, and most importantly, your why is going to make impressions that will last a lifetime. Having a holistic approach on content is going to be more beneficial to your audience over having SEO rich content.

4. CLEAR NAVIGATION

Clear site navigation is imperative in creating a successful website. Your user should be able to reach any page within your sitemap within 3 clicks no matter where they are on the site. Easy to navigate sites make the user experience better for your customers yielding to them staying longer on your site and pursuing content. Having clear navigation on your website will increase visibility with google and SEO. The reason for this is because it makes it easier for search engines to crawl through the webpages to see what the content is about.

WEBSITE DESIGN

(Visual Aesthetics)

We have all heard the saying “ don’t judge a book by its cover “… Well, when it comes to websites across the web, that is exactly what your customers will do. The average website visitor takes about 50 milliseconds to make a judgement about a website and whether they trust it enough to continue on. We have all seen those sites that are confusing, cluttered with pop ups and flashy animations. If you are like 90% of online users, your initial response is to click the back button and click on the next search result. Below we will outline some general Do’s & Don’ts to keep in mind when it comes to designing an attractive and easy to use website.

WEBSITE DO'S
WEBSITE DONT'S

WEBSITE DO’S:

Use clean and modern graphic elements and only use animations with minimal css
Create click to play call to actions on video and audio
Create consistent padding and margins within your content blocks
Break up long text blocks with paragraphs and supporting images
Use consistent fonts for the body text and titles with organized font sizing

Utilize Google web fonts and font combinations.
Use licenced stock images or your own images within your site
Make sure images have been saved for the web at 72dpi and are scaled properly for the site
Make sure text is visible and easy to read over any background colors, patterns or images

WEBSITE DONT’S:

No flashy gif animations or flashing buttons
No auto play videos or music
Don’t Over stuff text in long drawn out content blocks
Don’t over use bright colors and text

Don’t use silly outdated or super decorative fonts that are hard to read
No pixilated or low resolution images
No stolen images or content
Don’t use patterns or images as backgrounds behind content blocks making text hard to read

WEBSITE USABILITY

A pretty website without functionality and usability is utterly useless. Your site needs to attract your visitors,be easy to understand, view, and navigate. Your website visitors are also searching and viewing your site on a plethora of devices. Each device your customer uses should have a unique layout and experience whether they are browsing from the home computer or laptop, or on the go view from a phone or tablet. Screen sizes across these devices are different in aspect ratio, size, and functionality. The way we optimize websites to work seamlessly on any device is called “responsive website design” Simply put, all the rows & columns are designed in percent based dimensions rather than fixed pixel size. This allows your pages to stack and scale accurately on mobile devices as well as expand to fit any sized laptop or PC. If you are not sure your current website is mobile friendly or responsive, you can copy and paste your website URL into the “google mobile friendly test”. It’s important to delete your cache. If you don’t your website can take a lot longer to load.

WAYS TO BUILD A WEBSITE

PLATFORMS

In this modern era there are a variety of platforms to create your website. From free builders within your hosting account like godaddy or bluehost. To quote unquote free online builders like wix, weebly, and squarespace. Choosing the best platform for your website design or redesign is critical. There are a few factors to consider based on the needs of your business. If you are going to use a hosting website builder or a free online builder you will have limitations on how much you can customize your site to match your branding needs. You may be limited in being able to actually export your site outside of the free builder hosting.This essentially means you are not really the owner of your site.

WORDPRESS BENEFITS

When designing a winning website strategy, WordPress websites have become the industry standard for most businesses. With WordPress the possibilities are limitless. Every aspect of your site’s look, feel, as well as its features and functionality can be customized to the brands exact specifications. With the ability to add plugins, your wordpress website can be expanded into a fully functioning online store by integrating with e-commerce plugins like woo commerce. If you are looking for scheduling or online booking or reservations… there’s a plugin for that too. They have plugins for just about anything you can think of making wordpress extremely customizable.

PLUGINS & EDITING

Although WordPress may not be suitable for the average Joe to install and set up… An experienced web designer will be able to create an extraordinary wordpress website for you. Here at Opake screen printing, we create an easy to use backend page builder like elementor or visual composer. By adding these easy to use plugins… Business owners like yourself can quickly log in and change text or add blog posts or update any of the content blocks within their site.

HIRE OPAKE TO BUILD YOUR WEBSITE