It’s fair to say that the business environment has gone digital at this point. If you’re running any operation, no matter how big or small, you’ll need an internet presence if you want to see the best possible return.
Websites have been around ever since the internet was created, and we’ve come a long way from text-based websites and edgy 2000s GUI nightmares. Today, websites are slick, streamlined, and as user-friendly as can be.
In this article, we’ll explore today’s websites so that we can gain a perspective on the websites of tomorrow. Below, we’ll talk about what makes a great website, give you some top tips on how you can improve your website, and speculate what the websites of the future will look and feel like.
What Makes a Good Company Website?
Websites are the main digital hubs of brands and companies, so investing time, effort, and resources into giving your company a top-of-the-line website is a must in 2021. Consumers have never been more judgemental towards companies that have unusable, dated, or downright broken sites – and that’s not a bad thing.
This means that more and more companies will start to invest in their digital presence, which means innovation is just on the horizon. A website is a tell-tale of the company’s service – if it looks good, so does the company by association.
“Branding is the summation of people’s perception of who you are as a company.”
– Brooke Hernandez, Saw.
Domain brokers, designers, testers – you’ll need many things to make a good website, and none of them are going to be easy to find.
Making a great website is perhaps one of the most challenging things out there, as there are quite a lot of factors you need to take care of when you’re looking to portray the value of your brand accurately.
To help you understand what makes a great website, we’ve split it up into four different categories, each of which represents one or more margins that make a great website.
Beautiful Design
First and foremost, the thing that makes one website stand out among the crowd is the design. Think of the world’s biggest websites – Facebook, Google, Amazon – all of them have a very distinctive, recognizable, and slick design.
How you design your website will wind up being the first impression that visitors get when they come to your website. Whether you’re selling something or just running a blog, making it look as good as possible should be a priority.
A good-looking website is far more likely to attract and retain customers than a generic or bland one. When it comes to retention, you’ll want to maximize it as much as possible because the more people spend time on your website, the more likely they are to engage with the things on it, be it posts or listings.
First impressions do matter in the virtual world, so you’ll have to pay extra close attention to detail if you want to make your website stand out among the crowd.
Engaging Content
What good is a top-tier looking website if the things on it are less than desirable? The content on your website is what the users engage with, so you’ll have to make your content as engaging, inviting, and applicable as possible.
It’s a story as old as time – someone creates a gorgeous website and spends thousands of dollars making it look good but then winds up posting low-effort or low-quality content on it. Whether you’re posting listings or blogs, you’ll need to take care of the individual points themselves. Everything on your website has to be engaging, everything has to be appealing, and most importantly, every piece of your website’s content needs to be inviting.
If you’re not sure how to make your website content engaging, inviting, and appealing, you should solicit a content creation company’s services to help you make the visitors turn into regulars.
Outstanding UI & UX
The user interface is the part of your website with which the user interacts. WE’ve all seen nightmarish user interfaces before, where you had to navigate a boat-load of options to get to where you wanted.
It should come as no surprise that this is by far one of the worst things that can plague your website. A gorgeous design is nothing if it’s not usable, and top-tier content is nothing if it’s not easily accessible.
If users can’t comprehend or use your website they’ll take their business to another site, one that they can easily navigate.
If you don’t want to fall into this trap, you should invest in UI (User Interface) and UX (User Experience) optimization. UI optimization means making your website as straightforward, easy-to-use, and user friendly as possible. It’s all the programming behind the design, which turns visuals into design elements.
Optimizing your UX means making your customers as happy and satisfied with your website or service as possible. It’s relatively easy to do – you need to provide a questionnaire, quiz, or survey and then analyze the answers. Use the data gathered from these means to improve the user experience.
Lightning-fast Speed
Back in the olden days, it took hours to load a website properly. These days, it’s only a matter of milliseconds before you get what you’re looking for. If you don’t get it within a couple of milliseconds, you might click off and take your business elsewhere.
While there’s no industry standard time limit when users tend to leave websites, you really should work to make your website as fast as possible. Doing so will ensure that more people stick around as they’re getting what they want at a faster rate. If it takes more than a couple of seconds to load a page or listing, your user base will likely move on.
It depends a lot on your hosting plan and your website’s complexity, so it might not be the easiest thing to optimize.
However, with modern design solutions and hosting plans, it’s not nearly as challenging as it used to be.
How To Improve Your Website
Improving your website isn’t as simple as just remembering the golden rules. A good website isn’t just a virtual company presence – it’s an organic environment where users come to stay, thrive, and do their business.
That’s why you’ll need to pay extra attention to the little things. Below, we’ll give you some of our top tips for improving your website.
- Add numerous subscription/payment options
- Make sure to streamline the registration process
- SEO optimize your website with keywords
- Improve your ranking with SEM
- Revamp your call to action
- Create a landing page
- Interlink as much as possible
- Make frequent uploads and updates
- Always notify your user base of any changes
- Use the registration process to make a mailing list
- Offer frequent discounts, codes, and coupons
While these are some of the things you definitely should consider, it’s in no way a complete list. Making your website that much better can’t happen overnight, as it takes time, resources, and effort. However, if you’re ready to invest all of those into your website, you can rest assured that it will experience development, organic growth, and an influx of new visitors as well as old regulars.
Can You Future-Proof Your Website?
There’s no surefire way to future-proof your websites. The messes of text and graphics were once considered the latest and greatest in website innovation, and now we see them as distant memories of a dark past.
It’s hard to determine the future trends of websites, especially their relationship with brands and businesses. Companies seem to be investing more of their time and resources to building apps rather than improving their websites, which doesn’t mean that apps will outshine websites anytime soon.
This means that to future-proof your website and stay as relevant as long as possible – you’ll have to follow the latest website trends. Today, it’s minimalism. Easy navigation, simplistic graphics, and mellow design are the trends of today, but that all might change.
Even if it does change, it’s not going to do so anytime soon, so you can rest assured that your investment is well protected.
Final Thoughts
If you want to maximize your company’s appeal to sell your services or products more effectively, you’ll need a well-designed website. If you want to make yourself a website or already have one that isn’t performing as well as you would’ve hoped, a fantastic way to flip your luck is to integrate any of these tips.
Include as many as possible, and remember the four categories that make a great website. If you do everything by the book, we’re sure that you’ll make your website much better.