Hello Folks, It’s been a long time I was away due to my exams, well I am back to bang again. As I am a student of Business Administration and closely related to Finance & Accounts, today there was a discussion in my class about benefits of having a website, effective marketing technique and role of internet. During the whole discussion I was thinking about how a website could be better? What are the ingredients required to make a website to meet the quality standards? Is it possible to create profit making virtual business? These questions insisted me to search for successful virtual businesses and reasons of their success. The search ended up with the post about “Characteristics of a Good Website”.
A website should contain the characteristics mentioned below to become user oriented.
Appearance & Design:
Website design and outlook plays an important role in the success of any website. Use of appealing color schemes and consistency in design is an immense contributor, using excessive flash and images may irritate your visitors and due to this it may be possible that you would not be preferred over others. We have a best example of simplicity around us: Google.com. However you should not only go upon simplicity, you should also strive to design your website in a manner which attracts visitors.
High Quality Content:
Website’s outlook is still an important factor as it would attract visitors to prefer your website over others but it would be useless if you are not satisfying the needs and thirst of your users. If you can’t produce quality content then its far better to keep yourself away from establishing a website and wasting money in premium themes, plugins and designs. “High Quality Content” the phrase says it all:
High: Better than other websites.
Quality: It’s all about creating understandability through using examples and illustrations.
Content: For which visitors are looking for.
Do remember search engines are also more interested in fresh, original and appealing content than the copy cat ones.
Easy Navigation:
Your website should be easy to navigate, proper sections or categories should be maintained if you are working on various segments. This will help your users to sort out what they are looking for. Let’s consider myself, I’m interested in blogging stuff and I found a website related to blogging which contains technology and fashion stuff too. If the articles are not divided properly in different categories then most probably I have to go through fashion and technology stuff to read my interest, it may be possible that I would not prefer that site because of hard navigation.
Rapid Response Time:
If you are following above three steps then I am sure you will gradually feel both improvement and increment in your performance, immense use of flash, images and scripts may prove irritating for users with slow internet connection and it is also disliked by search engines. You must consider those factors and sort them out as soon as possible if you don’t want to lose your future visitors.
Mobile Compatibility:
Smart phones has changed our life, even I do most of my personal work through my phone. Your website should be compatible with different platforms as most of the users now use phones and tablets for different tasks. I am sure you guys are aware of the benefits. Giving accessibility to phones simply means increasing your number of visitors and possibly earnings too.
Conclusion:
These characteristics apply on every website, however there may be many more characteristics that may apply on other websites such as for Ecommerce (security of information of their clients in their dealings) and Quick Download time (If you are providing some kind of hosting/downloading services)
What are your thoughts about Characteristics of a Good Website? Share in comments.