If you own a small business your website is unquestionably one of the most significant tools in your arsenal for building a successful website to acquire more clients and customers. So, what distinguishes a good website from a bad one, or a decent website from a terrific one?
Here are 5 characteristics of a great website that any professional web designer will know.
Navigation
The most important thing in building a successful website is that it should be easy to use (UX design) with menu elements easily accessible from any page. A viewer can easily access the all-necessary elements like where they are on the website & where they want to go.
Remember that there is a thin line between an interactive menu and one that is unpleasant, therefore utility or UX design (user experience) should be the goal of any great web design agency!
Speed
The speed of your website can make or break your entire business. Regardless of the incredible technology involved in connecting people to numerous pages all over the world, users will go insane if the page does not load within three to five seconds.
They will most likely leave your website and never return, costing you prospective business. If you are a beginner using WordPress or WIX for the first time, best to consult with a local web design company who can offer design points to not only ensure you have a great looking website, but a website that will get easily found on Google.
Color Scheme
Customers undervalue the importance of color palettes. Different colors can evoke different feelings, such as tranquility, joy, or unhappiness.
When selecting colors for your website design, it’s critical to consider your company’s specialization, target market, branding, and color theory concepts. Is your color scheme overpowering or visually appealing if it complements your logo and branding?
Are you aiming to express your company’s voice with a professional, serene blue or a dynamic, feisty orange? Whatever you chose, spending the time to research the best color possibilities will make a good impression on your guests.
Content for a Successful Website
I suppose we are all aware of how much content influences the visual impression and the ability to access relevant information about the products and services we provide.
Advertising through multiple channels such as a website, Google AdWords, Digital Marketing, and Social Marketing channels gives content creation and development a new dimension and will help develop a successful website.
The blog here is quite important and should be used as a place to create posts that users will find easily on Google and will want to share on their own social channels. Your content should be the answer that most people on Google are searching for.
Creating authority content and quality articles will be an ongoing duty each week in order to get to and remain at the top of the search engine results pages, especially on Google. Try submitting your website articles to an article directory for extra Google love. It can’t hurt to share your content on any high ranking DR (domain rating) article directories to get a higher page rank!
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search engine optimization will be one of the key factors in creating a successful website! If you produce great content, trust me, this will go a long way in also driving your page rank on Google. Will a higher page rank, in any niche, comes more visitors, website traffic and revenue. After all, that is the goal right – to sell products and services? Well most of the website on the internet have that intent.
This is why, at some point throughout the development process, you must determine whether your website is compatible with the major search engines. Make sure it is SEO friendly from the start.
Yoast and RankMath plugins will help make your website optimized for the search engines but factoring in all the meta data, keywords, descriptions, alt tags, and structured data that search engines like Google need to rank you website high.
Take some measures to determine whether or not your successful website is easily found when someone searches for your brand name on Google or another search engine. Building a successful website should also involve a local SEO agency. Working with an experienced SEO company who is great at content development and backlinks creation will work wonders for finding your website high on the SERPs on Google.
Now, one thing we do for our clients when we construct their websites is provide them with at least basic search engine optimization, which will give their website a decent presence on search engines even without extensive adjustments.
CMS (Content Management Systems)
If you’re building a small business website with a WordPress CMS (content management system), you should know that only a few of these content management systems, their templates, software, and plugins are actually search engine optimized right out of the box.
Despite this, there are those whose layouts and plugins are not search engine friendly. Some are buggy, and a significant number of them can cause incompatibility difficulties on a website.
You do not want this on your website, and you should make this obvious to your website designer as much as possible. Any experienced web design company in Halifax and beyond will know how to optimize your new website for the search engines.
Don’t skimp on the design, SEO or marketing. Hire the best web development company and you can’t go wrong. Even if it’s not within your budget, over the long term it will pay dividends!
To summarize, a well-designed website will outperform your competitors and attract more visitors and potential customers. Customers should be involved in the site’s usability, content, design, and call-to-action.
The final goal in building a successful website should be to expand your business while also satisfying and capturing the interest of your readers. It is not just the beauty of the website that is important, but if it is user friendly, SEO optimized, and mobile friendly (responsive to all devices and browsers).
Who are the best web designers in Canada?
A simple Google search will give you a start at finding the most experienced and best web designers in Canada. Hire only the best web design companies that specialize in not only great looking customer websites, but ones that are user friendly, SEO optimized for Google and other major search engines, digital marketing and social marketing.
You will want to work with a local web design agency in Nova Scotia that has many skills not just design, but marketing as well. Try searching for Go Smart Media or Halifax Web Design and you are certain to find a company with experience and skills to build you a great looking website whether you are a small business or tourism operator in Atlantic Canada.
Author’s Bio:
Mark Berry is a technology enthusiast, self-care blogger, and paralegal at a business law firm. He writes about social and legal challenges with the goal of assisting readers in finding intelligent solutions to problems rather than difficult ones. He also enjoys giving his personal thoughts on technological advancements and life hacks.