By Cory Dambach, Sponsored by Back Forty Creative
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Today, a website is one of the most important forms of communication a business can implement. In fact, nearly two-thirds of small businesses rely on websites to connect with customers.1 However, a bad website is like a cranky salesperson who hasn’t had their caffeine yet.
Would you want to deal with that?
Assuming your answer is no, we agree! In today’s ever-growing online world, it’s not just about having a website, but having a good website (and in our preference, a really, really good website).
But what makes a website good? Great question, because it has an easy answer. A good website achieves its goals. The real art to website development is in how you get from a blank page to a strategically thought-out website designed to realize those goals. Any successful web project is going to go through pretty much the same process, but we like to start off by finding answers to the following questions.
Why do you want a website?
Who is your target audience?
What do you want from that audience?
How much are you willing to invest to get your audience to do the thing you want them to do?
The better answers we can get to these questions, the better the end product will be. From there, designers and developers take that information, run with it and construct an experience tailored to achieve the identified goals.
How do we do that? It really depends on what the goals are, but usually we’ll keep the following ideas in mind.
User Experience
A good website should be easy to use. In almost every case, you are asking your visitors to do something. It might be to buy a product, visit your store or engage with your content, but in every case, it’s the job of a high-quality website to make that engagement as easy as possible. Your site should be understandable to the user, even at a glance; this usually falls into place once a clear navigation is developed and calls to actions are placed throughout the site. Your customers won’t spend time hunting around for the things they need. If good user experience is not considered, the user will simply move on to the next site in their search results that can better help them achieve their end goal.
Appealing Design
A good website should be attractive and professional looking. Have you ever judged a book by its cover? Same thing applies here.
A well-considered, tailored design communicates confidence to the user and heightens a brand’s credibility. If you were to put two websites with similar content next to each other, the better-looking site will grab the conversion every time. Even if the products on the less attractive site are of higher quality, the more professional looking site will be more successful simply due to user indifference. They don’t know what makes your product better than the competition — you have to tell them, and, in most cases, you don’t have much time to convey this. This is what good design does. It helps make your case to the user about why your product or service is worth your audience’s time. Often, web design is about projecting clarity. This is who we are, this is what we do, this is why you should care about it.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO must also be considered in well-thought-out websites. SEO allows a website owner to understand how consumers are searching and finding information about their own brand and their competitors online. Good websites incorporate SEO practices to help increase visibility, visits and rankings. Fresh and engaging content also helps with this. Updating your site with featured news, a weekly blog or connecting social media channels can also help enhance your SEO efforts.
Efficient Development
Last, but definitely not least, a website needs to work correctly. That seems obvious, but you would be surprised how often this gets overlooked. This is the part where attention to detail matters. Does the site load well on mobile, even when you are out in the field? Do all of the buttons work well on your device? Is the information clean, clear and understandable? Every detail is important. Good websites do this well.
No matter what, everything comes back to the same concept in the end. Good websites achieve their goals.
Sources
Are you looking for a good website? We would love to assist you in growing your brand. To help simplify the process, we have a variety of web design and development packages to choose from, but also offer customization if you’re looking for something fantastically unique. So, give us a call today! (This is a call to action — something else all good websites need to have.)
What is sponsored content?
This article is sponsored content, also known as native advertising. That means that a sponsoring company wrote the article and paid for placement. However, instead of the information in a traditional ad, the information in a sponsored article is relevant to a specific topic, in which the sponsoring company is an expert. If you’d like to learn more about Acres U.S.A. and native advertising, visit our advertising page here, or call us at 1-800-355-5313.