What Does a Great Website Consist of?

As we all know that it is very important to have a website so as to communicate effectively with the world. Now with that argument being debated, as a rule of thumb, a good website ordinarily does the job, so to speak. While a great website really surpasses all the expectations and has a far better return. Well, the important question now is: what does a great website consist of?

Well, for me, a great website should meet the following rules:

CONTENT

The website content should be easy to find. This is simple. If a certain user cannot find information that they are looking for, then they have no reason at all to be on your site or even stay longer on your site. Just make sure that your content is variably easy to locate in different ways. For instance, on Cheb 2.0, a web design blog, you may be able to search for any keyword within the site which in turn will list matching posts and articles. You may even click on the Archives menu of a blog so as to show the articles posted that is sorted according to its date. Moreover, a tag cloud may also be present to search for a keyword or even a direct link for every month with the number of posts published during that month.

These methods are another form of search for posts and there are moments for visitors when such monthly archives really come in handy. For instance, if one of your website regular visitors went on a vacation for one week or so and then he returns back to your website the next month, your regular visitor just wants to see the posts they missed out on. This is the purpose of monthly archiving. Well my statistics shows that I have more than enough unique visitors, so definitely I am on the right track regarding my method of archiving, right?

Overall, better make sure that you take each step that is possible so as to ensure that the experience of the user will be a good one; permitting them to easily search for content will really help the said attempt.

Fresh and original written content brings people back to your website. RSS feeds are very useful to get more subscribers and I am a huge RSS feed supporter myself. Having RSS feeds on your site means that people may stay connected with your blog or website or any online event that you may have and they do not have to worry of reloading constantly for such new content. On the other side, new content on your site keeps people to come back. Even if they do physically click on your site to see or read through it or do not click on it, they are still considered a visitor and every visitor needs to be tracked.

A new link is considered by Google itself of big importance upon the determination of PageRank and its relevance. Better ensure that you set upon yourself a posting, blogging, editing regular schedule and try to follow it religiously. In relation with SEO, ensure also that you always keep your homepage updated and always with new content, and more so, do not afford to neglect your inner pages also.

Inner pages definitely do not refer to your old blog post dated many months ago. Better update your ‘About’ page for instance. Make them fresh and ensure that these essential pages are free, and they do not fall into minor results in the search engines, and make sure as well that the search engines including Google prioritize you as well.

THE LOOK AND FEEL OF YOUR WEBSITE

Make your website physically attractive to look at. If your site does not have a tremendous user base already that will never decrease and is not an online giant like Google, you have to ensure that the design of your website is appealing. It need not be glowing or shiny at all. Of course, you want your visitors to come back repeatedly to your site. That is why you need to make your site or blog physically appealing and attractive as people may look at your screen longer than five minutes or so. But they will not be able to stay longer if your site looks laid back. I have seen many websites that have such great written content and very good concept, but their websites are just so badly designed.

The user expects things to be the way it is. Let us say you cannot have your website to look really amazing and appealing, maybe it is better to meet your user or visitor half way. Maybe you can at least show off a sense of conformity and structure. This is an important aspect; you need to ensure that you make your page elements to be where the user or visitor expects them to see. If you aim for a look or a theme that is extravagant and ’shiny’ or any which way you like to be noticed, consider first the layout called ‘6 section grid model for website’.

As you can see on the figure, most web users are more relaxed with the said grid on many websites. Your logo is advisable to be set up on the top-most left section of the website; the same condition goes for your site search, if you have one, and even your top-level navigation. The navigation may also be placed on the top right section of the page or any place where it is easily recognizable. The grids serve just to be a guide and not meant to be followed religiously.

If the content is easy to find, the website sections are divided into groups of similar informational aspects. Remember that your content area is the most well known section of your website layout.

Be consistent in your scheme and colors. Ensure that your headings, colors, plug-ins and other aspects like the Google ads are consistent. Take note also of your font and link styles. You certainly do not want your link to be underlined, and other links do not have one. Consistency really signifies that it is easier to interrelate with your website. The visitors will also feel of how everything is working and what a link stands for.

CENTER AROUND THE USER

Practice accessibility and usability within the site. This one is also vital for such reasons. Check if you have enhanced your websites’ usability and accessibility. Ensure that you have checked how your website links and have someone check it out especially one who is suffering from color blindness. You may say to yourself that checking these things are all so minor, but no, I disagree. If you will be able to spell the difference between someone with color blindness, then you will be able to distinguish between your contents whether in linked or non-linked format.

It is better to give everyone the same chance of viewing your website and most especially your content. You will do everything to achieve such a purpose.

The user has every chance to correct the mistakes. Always ensure that your user always has a way out like side navigation, or a top navigation, search and even links back home. These are great players in this matter. Even if your site is very good, there will always be times when your users will get lost while surfing through your site. You may want to try the so-called Hansel and Gretel tactical method, that is, depending on the site type you have at the moment. Whatsoever you choose, the user really has different methods to correct any mistakes that they may make in the process. As a result, they will have the tendency to get off track.

Make significant file names. Creating great and such meaningful file names really is advantageous for the SEO and will work amazing wonders for the experience of the user. Ensure your URL is easy to follow. Hiding the information in a strange URL will kill the user experience and the user confidence in your website.

ARCHITECTURAL SITE

Site structure should be logical. Better make sure the structure of your website makes logical sense. There should be a logical flow within your site, e.g. top-down. The first should be the header then followed by navigation (that is, if not yet part of the header section), and then content with the sidebars or what is called the side navigation and followed by the page footer.

The footer is also important; a good one will help the user check if the page has loaded fully. If the user obviously doesn’t see yet the end of the page, then the page has not yet fully loaded.

Let us talk about taxonomy and folksonomy. It is better to put tags into your content as content that is tagged definitely means related content. Related articles are better for your site. Try to link the user to relevant articles or web pages that is based on the current page content. Just remember: do not link and link just for enjoyment or just to get more hits.

Classifying and connecting your information content is as equally important with the information itself. Always remember that whenever you are writing an article post for your site or designing a new website.

Have a purpose. If your website has no purpose at all, then it would not be able to survive in the end. Better find a niche first and foremost and be sure to tackle it with ease. Your niche may be about web design or some get rich fast schemes. Just look for a reason to have your visitors come back for more of your site. Bring always relevant and fresh content or even an enjoyable flash game that visitors won’t be able to part with your site. Bear in mind that anything you create online should have an ultimate goal in order to succeed.

Track and report. Great websites always learn from their own errors. There are tools like Google Analytic’s used in determining the not so popular and popular sections of your website. You may be able to decipher and analyze why a certain written content is not as popular as the next content.

Some good webmasters who make websites do the comparison between pages that work and do not work. They just remove or they do not publish something that isn’t pulling any visitors as compared before. The great webmasters and great designers will just segregate the page and look for some reason why said page is failing.

This scenario may happen: article content that is written more than 10 months ago may become the near future’s most popular article online. History repeats itself.

Do not unpublish an article or simply remove pages because of the reason that you are running out of memory space or the article is getting old. Well, if you are running out of memory space, better get some additional space then.

Source: The Pro-Designer