What makes a great website? The question seems simple enough, but it’s actually pretty tough to answer in a comprehensive manner. Websites are probably the single most important tool for modern businesses, and virtually every business has one. But it’s not enough to have a good website—you need a great website that helps you stand out from the competition.
With that in mind, the team at Peppermonkey Media is here with this quick primer on making a great website. Contact us today to speak to the top website development company in NJ.
Elements of a Great Website
A great website is more than just the sum of its individual elements. What makes a website great is how the elements combine and feed into one another to create a user-friendly and engaging experience. None of these elements alone make a great website, but high-quality websites will usually have a combination of the following features.
Purpose
The first step of creating a website is zoning in on its main purpose. Ask yourself: what do users want to do when visiting my site? User intent is the base around which you build the rest of the website.
Identifying user intent means identifying your target audience by creating an ideal custom profile (ICP). An ICP is a hypothetical user that represents your ideal customer. In other words, think about the goals and desires of your hypothetical audience and design each page to suit that purpose.
For example, the purpose of landing pages might be to get visitors to sign up for your newsletter or create a site account. No page on your website should be “filler” that doesn’t serve any clear, tangible purpose. User intent is reflected in the page content, layouts, CTAs, and more.
Good Content
On the internet, quality content is and always will be king. Most people come to the internet looking for useful information, so your website should be ready to dispense important knowledge regarding your products or services based on related topics. High-quality, original, and well-sourced content will help your search results and turn your brand into a leading authority.
Although not the whole picture, proper SEO is invaluable for boosting your content profile online. SEO considerations should shape site content through things like topic clusters and pillar pages.
SEO extends to more than just the actual content on your page. Search engines also take into consideration site organization. Organizing web pages by topics allows users to find the information they are looking for and helps search engines parse your site to generate results.
UX Design
User experience (UX) design is a bit different than web design. Web design approaches creating a web page from its code and functionality—all the technical bits that make the website do what it’s supposed to do. UX design, on the other hand, focuses on web design from the perspective of the user. This involves designing the user interface, page layout, and page elements.
Every good website starts with UX considerations. Think about the typical user that will visit your page and design elements to fit their needs. A clear user interface (UI) design with readable fonts, navigation options, and accessibility features can make a seamless online experience for your customers.
A good UX design is crucial for site retention and a ket feature of what makes a great website. Some studies show that nearly three out of every four visitors said they would not revisit a site with a poor user design. Illegible fonts, awkward layouts, and poor picture resolution are all flaws that can negatively impact the user experience and hurt your brand’s reputation.
Fast Load Times
If you have ever been on a slow website, you know how frustrating it can be when a page refuses to load or doesn’t load all of its elements. Fast load times are a necessity as more and more users expect to access information at their fingertips whenever they need it.
Most desktop websites take about three seconds to load on modern devices, and every second counts. Compared to a one-second load time, a three-second load time has a 32% higher bounce rate, while a five-second load time has a massive 90% higher bounce rate.
Responsive Design
Responsive design means developing a website that can dynamically adjust its elements to fit any screen resolution and orientation. Incorporating responsive design principles into your website is a necessity nowadays, given how many people access websites on non-desktop devices, such as smartphones or tablets. Responsive design ensures your website retains functionality and layouts no matter which device your website is viewed on.
Responsive design is especially important, considering how many people surf the web on their smartphones. According to data from Statista, nearly 60% of global internet traffic in 2023 was from mobile devices, and that number is only expected to increase as smartphones improve computing power and capabilities.
Mobile-friendly responsive design is also important from the perspective of site optimization. With responsive design, you can view analytics and statistics on websites to determine which types of layouts and elements are the most successful.
Security
No matter what kind of business you run, your website will be dealing with private and sensitive customer information, whether it’s emails, credit card info, or personal details. Few things are worse for a business’s reputation than getting hacked and exposing private information or sensitive financial data.
As such, business websites need to focus on security. The more secure your website, the more comfortable visitors will be using it, and the less likely you will suffer a data breach. Data breaches are also pricey, with the average breach costing about $4.5 million in damages.
Full-Service Marketing for Small & Medium Businesses
Read our blog post to learn more about the core elements of web design, website maintenance costs, and what makes a great website. If you have any further questions or would like to supercharge your business’s marketing, contact Peppermonkey Media online or give us a call today at (732) 576-0171 to schedule a strategy session!
