Ah, yes, the million dollar question. What makes a good website? What makes a bad website? We all want to know what makes a website a good website. Well, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, of course, but there are some essentials. Here are the 7 essentials to a good website:
1. Purpose:
This is the crux of what we talk about when we're up on our soapbox. You'll hear us use the word 'objectives' a lot. Why do you have a website? What its purpose? How are you going to measure your success?
2. Design:
We're talking about things like colour choice, alignments, visual interest, and meaningful metaphors.
3. Message:
Content is king. Every page in your website needs a goal. You need to understand what your target audience is looking for (this is more complicated than it sounds as brides look for different things in different companies) and what you want them to do. Then you must provide them with the appropriate information and a meaningful call to action.
4. Architecture:
How are your pages organized? Is it intuitive? Will your target audience understand?
5. Usability & Accessibility:
HTML is still a coding language and it needs to be well formed and accessible. Not everyone who visits your site is perfectly enabled. Some people have disabilities, some have slow connections, some can't install the Flash plug-in. Knowing your target audience and your goals certainly helps to set your usability and accessibility standards.
6. Online Marketing:
Appealing to the search engines is a game. Get it wrong and you'll find yourself banned. Do it right and you'll be rewarded with lots of free, targeted traffic. It's not difficult, it just takes experience and planning
7. Technical Stuff:
Is your domain easy to remember? Is your ISP reliable? Do they have 20,000 other websites hosted on your server? Do they support the right technologies for your website to grow?
The concept of a successful web site can be displayed using the iceberg anaology. While there are certain aspects of a successful site visible above the surface, a majority of the sites attribute will be hidden below the surface.
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