1. Organization and Structure:
Good websites are well organized and follow a structure. They are not cluttered; they are clean and professional. They are also built around a target audience and market. Organization makes a website accessible and user-friendly.
2. Simple Navigation:
Successful websites offer simple and user friendly navigation. Visitors must find everything they need quick and easy. If users have to wonder around the site trying to find what they need they will get frustrated and leave.
3. Original content:
High quality websites focus on their audience’s needs, not on what they’re selling. Good and fresh content builds the visitor’s interest and invite them to get involved, invite their friends and come back for more.
4. Outstanding Design:
Beautiful & contemporary design makes a site memorable. A good website is built around a theme that matches its market and personality.
5. Speed:
Optimized graphics, video and audio give a website the necessary speed it needs to load fast. Users don’t want to wait for slow content to download; they need their information quickly and without delay.
6. Clean and Validated Code:
Messy, outdated, deprecated, or wrong code can reduce a website’s search engine visibility. It can also generate browser-rendering issues that will slow down your website. Validated code will help for browser compatibly; following the standards is a way to ensure that the site will have a higher chance to be correctly display in different browsers.
7. Easy to read:
Most people don’t read websites; they scan them. Contrast and hierarchy help the site’s readability by making the content easy on the visitor’s eyes.
Contrast between the text color and the website background is very important. Good websites will never use a black background color and dark blue text or white background color and yellow text.
Hierarchy helps people identify important sections on the website. High-quality websites use headings to break up the content in sections and provide small blocks of text to help their visitors read their content better.
8. Search engine optimization:
A great website with no visitors is an invisible website. SEO or search engine optimization will help bring an audience to the site. It is also important to consider that bringing relevant users plays a key role in the growth of a website. It is not just about establishing a generic audience, it is about bringing potential customers that will appreciate and pay for your services.
9. Tracking:
Metrics & site analysis give insights of what’s going on in a website. Good sites measure their traffic and marketing efficacy. Tracking also helps to target better a site’s customers, generate relevant ads, and create a higher converting website.
10. Link building
Links are an important factor in determining where a website will appear in search engine results. Good websites promote themselves in other high-quality websites like Google Local, Yahoo! Local, Yellow Pages, LinkedIn and more. Another way to promote and improve link building is to submit articles to websites related to your industry. Most online magazines or blogs allow a link back to your website from your article.
Want more from the author? Google Martha Garzon from m5 design studio.