If you hit a search term and come up with websites dealing with the same subject, it is certain that some will attract your attention than others, even when they may all carry the same content. If you are a user, you can switch until you find a site that can quickly give you what you want. However if you are a web designer, you will want to produce a website that will attract and keep your visitors engaged. [quote] The trick is to get users attracted with great web design as well as with engaging content. [/quote]
Formula for a Great Website:
Create Original Content
Besides the obvious problems of plagiarism, making sure that your content is well written, appropriately presented and unique will give your readers something to always come for. It is common to see sites that just spread the information around, or just throw keywords for SEO purposes without making much sense. Try to make give value to your visitors by presenting carefully thought out text to attract and keep them coming for more quality information.
Design for your Target Audience
Keep your target audience in mind. You cannot design for the whole world, of course you can but if you are trying to sell a product or service, you will want to target a particular niche and keep that niche population in mind when you create your site. You have to think about them, put yourself in their shoes and ask yourself if you were of the target population would you like your site.
Create a simple but creative and professional design. You might have come across sites whose webmasters have included all the tips and tricks of web design that they have learned to get and keep visitors. This is counterproductive as it reduces the value of the site. What is more the user gets confused with too much elements and you may find them avoiding your site instead. Therefore choose your design and follow through to the end. If it doesn’t work then change, reinvent and give your site a facelift.
Work on your Navigation
One of the important characteristics of a good website is the navigation. Great navigation lets users see where they are on your site, and also lets them know how to move about. Use creative techniques, text and symbols to help visitors navigate your site. Chances are when a person needs to look for information on the subjects that you deal with, they will likely come to your site, and also keep coming for more as they can find what they want, and they can also reference and cross reference with ease.
Design for Speed
Make sure that your site is easy to load on the browsers. Limit the graphic elements or optimize them for speed. If your site takes too long to load, it may be frustrating and users may tend to avoid your site.
Optimize your site for search engines
Good SEO techniques will enable your site to be indexed and found. Do not use keyword stuffing or other guerrilla tactics to get your site indexed and ranked. Use keywords so that they blend naturally into your web content and you will be on the way to attracting and keeping great clients.
A Good Website should have Functional and Reciprocal links
Create good content, but support them with great links for further information that that they may find your site an excellent resource. Moreover these links should regularly be checked to know if they are not dead links. Dead links should be checked, removed and replaced.
A good website regularly has information updated. They will keep information fresh so users can benefit from fresh content. You can use feeds to let users know when content is updated and also employ social marketing skills to make people know that your site is up, running and improving daily.
Need a little expert advice on how to take your online presence from good to great? Contact our team of web development gurus today!
