Things to consider for a great web page

After being in the Internet game for over 14 years, I keep on getting asked "what makes a great web page?" As a web designer we assess your requirements and build a unique and specific website to meet your vision. Take the analogy of baking a cake: to get the best cake, you have to use quality ingredients. Building a quality website is much the same you need to get quality advice and help from both your website developer and your SEO company. The things you need to think about for your website include: How does your website look? What do the graphics look like? How does it compare to your competitors? Does it look professional or amateurish? (Too many website owners create a web page on a shoe string budget, not knowing what they are doing and it looks unfinished and often full of inappropriate material.) Would you buy from the website if you came across it during a search? As the saying goes, first impressions count. If your website has not been update since "Adam was a cowboy" do you think it is about time you do?

Some features of a great website? Firstly the website is clean and simple. The website must be easy to the eye and loads quickly. Secondly the content of the website has to be relevant to your market. Imagine and think of who your client is and what do they want from you? Simply stated, place yourself in their shoes. Provide credibility to your website by over-delivering and providing realistic and honest content. This will keep your customer at your website.

Your website must be easy to move around. Many times I have found myself looking for what a website offers and what the product pricing is. I'm highly unlikely to purchase from a website where I have to jump through hoops to see what I'm going to get. Getting your tabs and page links right is so important. Another must for your website is to have the important tabs above the fold. The Fold is the bottom of the screen. If you have a person looking for your product they tend not to read too much content unless it has already captivated them. Most people are unwilling to scroll down the screen to look for your tabs and your offerings! Think about how your website can be made easy for the lazy man to view and find your products!

Ensuring that the website is easy to visit for the web-surfer and they can promptly see what your website is about without having to jump around too much is to place page tabs at the top as well as the bottom of the screen. Good idea is to also place the privacy pages, disclaimers and terms of service at the footer (bottom of screen). If the web-surfer likes your website and interested in your product or service the next step would be to make a great 'about us' page. People will want to know who are the people behind the company and the product. This supports their buying decision, things like photographs of the team. People want to see what you look like i.e. friendly, serious, trustworthy or dependable. A clear and easy to find "contact us" page is required. The more ways you can be contacted the more at ease will be the client. Suggested ways to be contacted are telephone numbers, email address, postal address, fax numbers and a Skype address. Being in an 'information age' the more information you place out there and the more people have access to your information, the better it is for your credibility. By developing a blog page that is updated often, where clients can subscribe to, meets the clients need for information along with an added benefit of entertaining them. Also as well as pleasing your customers, Google and other search engines are happy because they love new content.

Another strong feature to have on your website is to have a membership area. You ensure that the membership is 'price friendly' and is a great way to keep your customers up to date with your products, services, events, industry news etc. It is a sound idea to have a site map and generally there are two types of site maps. One for web-surfers and one for search engines. The site map for search engines is the important one, as this helps with quality scoring your website. Search engines want to know what is on your website, its keywords and layout. A strong site map can even assist search engines direct customers to your website. web-surfers wish to access your website quickly, so ensure that your photos are in a compressed format.

Overall for me as a website developer to know what works or what doesn't work, I attach a tracking program to all the websites we have built or amended. This allows me to track the number of visitors to a website, the words they are searching for on your website, the length of time they are staying and what are the most popular pages. Putting the above tips into practice onto your website, will provide you with a great website. You can have an affordable website created by website designer in a simple, clean and information packed format where web-surfers will visit you often and wanting more of your product or service.