What makes a good website and is yours one of them?
As website design and development experts we are always being asked, “What makes a good website?”
Of course, everyone has different opinions about design aesthetics and each brand has its own personality and style guide. However, every good website weaves together great website design with exceptional functionality.
At Global Bay, we believe a good website ALWAYS includes:
Whether you have a business website or your website is more personal and hosts blog posts, the basics of what makes a good website remain the same.
There are also many factors that affect your website performance, from search engine optimization to page load time and high quality website design.
In this blog, we will be sharing our Global Bay best practices of what makes a successful website. We’ll also share some helpful resources and ideas for how you can make your good website into a great website.
Visual impact- make an outstanding first impression
Modern website design is driven by striking visuals.
You never get a second chance to make a first impression, and that’s especially true when it comes to your website design.
Research suggests that you have just 50 milliseconds – that’s 0.05 seconds – for visitors to form an opinion about your website. If your website isn’t visually impactful and your users don’t get the “wow” factor within that tiny window, they’ll form a negative opinion about your brand and be less likely to engage with you and ultimately, buy from you.
In fact, 75% of people base the credibility of a business purely on the design of the company’s website. Even more significantly, 94% of people say a website’s design is the reason they’ll mistrust it
So, how can you make your website visually impactful?
How to get the "Wow" factor on 1st impression
The creative possibilities for delivering an exceptional user experience to your site visitors are endless. From stunning video and photo content to interactive animations, your website’s visual content is what can make your business website stand out from the crowd.
We’ve collated a few ideas for how you can create well designed websites that deliver the “Wow” factor.
Design an impactful landing page
Make your website stand out from the crowd with an impactful landing page.
Make sure the “above the fold” content – that’s the content that users see when the page first loads, without any scrolling – gives a visually impactful positive first impression with a clear to understand heading.
Uncluttered visuals
Ensure the website design is uncluttered. Make it easy for users to see your company name and one line pitch.
Make it clear what your business does and what your offering is. Remember, showing not telling is the best way to get your message across. That means avoiding long chunky blocks of text.
If you have lots of information to share, think about more engaging ways of showing it…could you design an infographic? Make a video or animation? Create a quiz to make it easier for your users to reach your desired end result? Get creative, or even better, ask a digital agency to get creative for you.
Invest in original visual content
Investing in quality content that is specific to your business and brand gives you the opportunity to not only make your site visually striking, but also provides excellent on brand visual resources for your social media and other digital marketing channels.
Utilising powerful imagery, or even better, a custom made video showcasing your company, is proven to not only increase your web traffic, but also increase sales.
A recent study found that out of a group of marketing professionals who consistently use video as a marketing tool, 86% say videos have increased traffic to their site, and 78% say videos have directly helped to increase sales.
Using an impactful video in your header is an easy way to make an immediate positive impression of your website and brand.
Be consistent with your branding
Whether you are using a website builder or are working with an agency, before you begin building your website, make sure you have clear brand guidelines in place. What are your brand colours, fonts, and consistent logo? What is your brand’s aesthetic style and tone of voice?
CONSISTENCY IS KEY.
Make sure that the visuals on your website reflect what your customer will expect to see. If they’ve found you on social media or through another form of advertising and see a completely different visual style, this will damage your business website’s first impression and credibility.
Mobile friendly design
When designing your website, keep in mind that 55% of web traffic comes from mobile users and 92.3% of internet users access the internet using a mobile phone. Therefore, it is essential that your web design is mobile friendly.
Creating a mobile friendly website design also means that it is optimized for search engines. This is because search engines like Google use mobile first indexing to create their search rankings. Mobile first indexing assesses the content from the mobile version of your website to decide where it ranks. So your website’s ranking can be hugely affected if your website’s content is not mobile friendly.
How to optimise your site to be mobile friendly
Responsive Design
Make sure the software that drives your website employs a responsive design approach which means the website will automatically resize across different sized browsers. Sometimes this will mean hiding content that shows on desktop and showing a mobile-only version, using techniques such as flexible grids and layouts, fluid images, and media queries.
Mobile-First Content
Assume that your mobile web users will be browsing your site on their data connections, which means you need to optimise your images and videos to be delivered in the smallest way possible. This will not only reduce bandwidth, but also reduce load times.
Page Speed and Performance
Improve your website’s mobile loading speed by minimising unnecessary elements, leveraging browser caching, and optimising code. Compress images and use lightweight scripts to enhance performance. Regularly test your site on various mobile devices and browsers to identify and rectify issues that may impede a smooth user experience.
Fast Site Speed
As we learned earlier, a user will make a decision about your website within the first 0.05 seconds of it loading. If they’ve had to wait a long time for it to load in the first place, your chances of making that great first impression are already reducing.
Also, website load speed is not only important for user experience, but is vital for your Search Engine Optimization (SEO). This means that having a fast page load time can make your site rank higher in Google’s search results.
A website’s load time is one of the most important signals used by Google’s algorithm to rank pages and influence their position in organic search results. If your website takes more than 4 seconds to load, Google considers that “poor” and will penalise your website in its rankings.
They base those timings on their own research that shows that users will click “back” and return to search page results after around 3 seconds. So not only does a poor load time damage your search engine rankings, you’ll also likely be losing customers too.
You can find out if you have a fast website using this free tool: https://pagespeed.web.dev.
How to optimize your site speed and load time
Make sure you are on a suitable server
Investigate your web hosting provision and see if you could benefit from upgrading to a better package or moving hosts to a solution that will serve your needs. Most hosting companies will help you advise on the best package for your website.
Website server hosting and maintenance is something that we help many clients with. You can find out about Global Bay’s Climate Positive Website Care Plans here.
Optimise all of your website content
If you are using images, ensure they are optimised for website viewing and use next generation formats. If you are using video, make sure your server is set up to deliver video, and that the video is adequately compressed for web display.
Optimise your code
Depending on the platform your website is built in, there are a variety of tools you can use to optimise your website’s code. From code minification to delaying the load of some types of code, there are endless ways that you can clean up your site’s code to ensure a better performance.
Consider using a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
CDN’s take a copy of your website’s content and distribute it to servers across the world, meaning the site loads faster for users, regardless of where they are. This is essential if you have an international audience.
Utilise caching
Caching is where a user’s browser will store a website’s code – essentially “remembering” a website – so that when the user returns again, the content load speed will be much faster. The website platform you are using will dictate how you set up caching.
For example, if you are using WordPress there are a number of plugins such as Litespeed cache or WPRocket that help manage caching.
Optimising your website’s load time can become quite technical quite quickly. If you’re not sure how your website works or how it was built, considering hiring a developer or agency to help you with these tasks.
Need help optimising your site? We guarantee that your website will test at 90+ on desktop and 70+ on mobile.
Exceptional user experience (UX)
Every website exists for a reason. It can be anything from showcasing services, selling products directly from the website, sharing thoughts in a blog, delivering news – the options are endless.
For all websites, and business websites in particular, it is vital that your users know what you want them to do. You want to help users navigate your web pages easily and have a positive user experience.
Giving your customers an easy user journey means that they will reach the goal you would like them to achieve more quickly, increasing your likelihood of sales and improving your bottom line.
Firstly, you need to understand your user intent. Why are they visiting your website and what do they want to get from it?
Secondly, can you make it easy for your potential customers to find what they need? Have you presented your services or products using high quality imagery? Can your potential customers easily find reviews or information about your products or services? If a user does have a problem finding something on your website or they want to ask you something else, is it easy for them to contact you?
Websites are sometimes described as “digital shop fronts”. Your user journey for your online store should be carefully planned in the same way that a brick and mortar store layout is.
Have a look at your own website again– even better, ask a few different people to take a look– and ask this question: “Is it clear what I want the user to do next?”. If it’s not, it might be time for a design tweak or overhaul to improve the user experience; make the journey simpler; and ultimately improve your website conversions.
Top tips for improving your user journey
Start with the end in mind
What do you want a website visitor to ultimately do?
This will identify your ideal user and you can ask the following questions: What is your user feeling when they’re on your website? Where did they hear about you? What problem are you solving for them?
These questions will help you identify a “user persona”, which can be used to assess any areas of improvement for your website’s journey.
Ensure signposting everywhere
Think of your website like a small town, or depending on its size, even a big city. Cities and towns are difficult to navigate if you don’t know where you’re going and have no instructions – websites are exactly the same.
Ensure you have plenty of links, buttons, and sign posting to different areas of content across your site, making it easy to jump between sections.
Add a search bar
Depending on the nature of your site, a search bar can be a very useful tool for time pressured users who know exactly what they want from you. It can get them to their destination quickly and efficiently.
Put your content in the right place
Similar to our tips on impact on first load, ask yourself, “How easy is your content to see, read, and access?”. Is the website design uncluttered and easy to digest? Design and layout choices are an important aspect in improving user journeys.
Make it easier for them to find your contact information
Create a hyperlink to your contact page in the footer of your website. Or even better, add a chat-bot function to your website for even faster customer response time.
Outstanding copy
The words that you write on your website are the equivalent of a pre-internet sales letter. It’s the online CV for your business.
Throughout our many years of experience building websites, we’ve seen countless examples of sites that do not clearly explain what a company does. They have plenty of written content, but if we were asked at the end of reading it, “What does this company do?”, we wouldn’t have been able to answer.
Consider if your copy is written appropriately to really describe exactly what your offer is. If you showed your website to a 10 year old, could they tell you what you do? If your copy is written well and displayed correctly, they should be able to tell you. If they can’t, the issue isn’t the 10 year old!
Why does good copy matter?
Aside from actually explaining what you do, good copy, and how it is arranged on your website, is vital for SEO. Google and other search engines crawl your site to understand what it is about and serve relevant content to their users. This means that using the right keywords in your titles and body copy is vital for your website being found by potential customers.
Copy and tone of voice is often related to a wider branding strategy and marketing work, and can be a big project to undertake. Getting it right is not only vital to the success of your website, but the success of your business too.
Top tips for improving your copy
Consider your customers
Are the words on your website really talking to your ideal customer? Does your copy clearly and articulately offer a solution to your target market? Make sure that your website copy is easy to read and that you are sharing relevant information.
Keep in mind that high quality copy doesn’t necessarily mean high quantity. It is much better to be succinct and make it easy for your potential customer to find what they need.
Make your copy consistent across all your marketing material
Is your brand tone of voice super chatty on social media, but very formal on your website? As with your visual identity, your copy and tone of voice is also important to keep consistent so that you are always engaging your target audience.
Streamline your copy
When you are passionate about your business it can be easy to write lots of content– quite often, too much! As we learned earlier, website users are time pressured and impatient, so they will be unlikely to reach your conversion goal if they are bombarded with too much copy. Take the time to assess what it is that your target audience wants to know and clearly share it with them.
Make sure your copy is optimized for search engines
When adding copy to your website, it is important that you use the correct tags so that search engines can easily decide whether you have relevant content for a specific search term.
Page titles should have an H1 tag to show search engines that it is the page title. There should only be one H1 tag on each page. Tag other headings with H2, H3 etc. as you need, and make sure your body copy is tagged with P.
Ensure each page has got a page title, meta description and image assigned to it, and that it is searchable by robots.
How to implement these changes will vary depending on platform. If you are using WordPress, we recommend Yoast’s SEO plugin to help you with these tasks.
Consider hiring a professional copywriter
If writing words succinctly, articulately, and purposefully to include your desired keywords isn’t in your skill set, consider hiring a professional copywriter.
Whilst Chat GPT is an option to help you write content nowadays, its output is usually quite generic and will not help your business stand out against your competition. Our experience has shown that outstanding copy that’s authentic to your brand can still only be delivered by a professional copy writer.
Need help with your copy writing or technical SEO implementation? Talk to Global Bay’s digital experts today.
Easy-to-use navigation
Making your website easy to navigate is essential to converting prospective customers. It is the difference between your user having to think hard about what they want and where to click on your website to get that, versus displaying it to them simply, easily and allowing them to get there in just one click.
Having a well thought out, simple navigation bar on your website is vital to delivering an exceptional user experience. It will increase the time that a user spends on your website as they’ll be able to see your different sections and be more likely to click around your site.
If you combine that with all the other tips in this guide, the likelihood of your user achieving your desired goal will be high.
The options for the design of a navigation bar vary:
Traditional top menu bar
This is the most common type of menu you will see, with a bar across the top of the website with all the content. Some menu items may have an additional “drop down” to show more links under a menu heading.
Sticky menu
This is the same as the top menu bar, but it stays visible on the page wherever the user is. This makes it easy for the user to be able to click around the site regardless of how far they’ve scrolled.
Fly out menu
These menus are hidden and appear once the user clicks on an icon – usually a three line menu icon. It then displays all of the content, and is often a good tool to consider if your website has lots of content and multiple pages, as it allows the menu to take up the whole screen.
However, do consider the demographic of your audience to ensure they will understand that the menu is hidden and that your menu icon is where they need to click to reach your navigation area.
While it depends on the design of your website, generally we recommend the “Sticky menu” option as the best approach on a desktop for ease of use and total clarity. On a mobile, you will likely need to use a fly out menu.
Tips for improving your menu navigation
Organise your content
Consider the best way to organise all of your content in the most logical way, depending on how many pages you have. Can your services or products be grouped under an overall heading? Can your blog items be categorised under themes? Use this model to create “top level” menu items which have sub pages so that a user can see all of your content in logical groups.
Ensure responsiveness
Remember that your menu style needs to work on both desktop, tablet and mobile devices. This will usually mean that menu styles will change across devices, and your menu on a mobile will likely concertina into a fly out menu. Does your current menu structure still work on a mobile? If not, consider serving different menus for mobile users versus desktop.
Focus on your target audience's needs
Remember that all website users are different: from the very tech savvy user to the extreme technophobe. Your navigation needs to successfully serve this full spectrum of users, so make sure whatever choice you make will be understood by your target demographic. For example an overly designed and unique menu icon may not be obvious to everyone and could lead to people leaving your website.
Clear calls to action
“If you don’t ask, you don’t get.” Mahatma Gandhi’s famous quote is applicable not only to business but to all of life. It is particularly relevant when it comes to your website.
If your website ticks all of the tips in this guide – it has great copy, looks great, loads fast, is easy to use – but you don’t ask anything of your users, then everything else is pointless.
Calls to Action (CTAs) are tools that are used across advertising to entice your prospective customer to do something. At the most basic level, a call to action might ask your user to “Get in touch today”.
However, they can be used in a variety of ways in combination with other marketing tactics. For example, scarcity and time limits are commonly used “Limited time offer, buy today”, or “Don’t miss out, only 100 available”.
CTAs can be used throughout your website to prompt users to do what you want them to. Where you place them, how they look, and the copy used is a careful but vital consideration in your web design.
The options for CTAs are vast. For example, you can have multiple CTAs on a landing page: you can include them in your menu navigation; you can get them to pop up on the screen; you can place them at the end of posts or content.
Utilising CTAs correctly will improve your conversion rates, and as with all our other tips, CTAs also help to improve your SEO rankings by increasing your click through rates.
The conversion statistics for powerful CTAs are huge – a recent study found that revenue increases by up to 83% when CTAs are relevant and well placed. That’s a huge increase which no business should be missing out on.
So take another look at your website and check if you are asking your users to do what you really want them to.
Tips on creating CTAs
Be clear on your ask
Consider what you want your user to do. Is it a consistent ask, or are you running a particular campaign? The answer to this will influence the wording. Make sure your text is concise but catchy, utilising active words like “buy”, “enquire” or “subscribe”. Your wording should create a desire which your user can’t miss out on.
Consider the location of your CTAs
The right place for your CTAs will vary depending on the ask, the context, and your target demographic. They can work anywhere on your site, but consider where is the best place to prompt an action from your user persona (which you might have created in our User Journey tip).
Make CTAs stand out
CTAs should stand out against your pages, be easy to see, but fit within the overall aesthetic of your web design. Choosing a complimentary colour which will “pop” against the content of the rest of your page will increase the likelihood of a user noticing and then clicking your CTA.
Need help crafting and implementing CTAs? Speak to your expert design and marketing team today.
Security assurance
Security assurance reassures users that your website can be trusted. At the most basic level, it means that your website has an SSL certificate. What this looks like for the user is that your website loads with https:// before the web address.
A website that has an SSL certificate is a strong website that is protecting user security. For users, it shows that you are keeping their data secure, that they are accessing the verified version of your website and that they can trust your website to share their personal data and payment information. This is especially important for ecommerce sites or even restaurant websites that accept payments online.
If site visitors to your website domain, particularly an ecommerce site, receive a warning message that your website is not safe, then they are going to leave immediately and you are going to lose business.
Tips on creating security assurance
Get an SSL certificate
This really is the most important thing you can do to gain website user trust. You can easily get an SSL certificate from your website hosting provider. Some of them charge for it as an extra service. Our Climate Positive Website Care Plan includes it as standard.≈
Invest in your website design
75% of people base the credibility of a business purely on the design of the company’s website and 94% of people say a website’s design is the reason they’ll mistrust it.
So, having a well designed, on-brand website that combines all of the elements we have highlighted in this blog, really does have a huge impact on both your brand reputation as well as your bottom line.
You can read more about how web design affects customer trust here.
Need help with any of the tips in this guide? Global Bay is a digital agency based in Bristol, working with clients worldwide. We make beautiful, cutting edge websites and supercharged digital presences for forward thinking, innovative brands.
Whether you are starting your business, launching a new product or wanting to expand into new markets, Global Bay can help your brand make an impact and digitally stand out from the crowd.