Myths About Bad Websites vs Good Websites

Characteristics of a good website

1. Well designed

The design of a good website should be simple, yet professional. The design should not take away or distract from the content. Use design to help you get your message to visitors, not to distract them from the message. Colors should not be hard on the eyes, and text should be easy to read. Breaking up text into subheads and bullet points will improve the layout of the page and make the text more scanable.

Design plays more than just a role in presenting your company as a professional, cutting edge business. A well designed website is also more likely to appeal to search engines for ranking. In fact, there are
several design decisions you can mess up to negatively impact your search engine visibility. Two of the most glaring errors are to build all or a significant piece of the website in flash or JavaScript, both of which cause problems with crawling/indexing or viewing on various computing platforms (e.g. flash does not work on Apple products such as iPhones, iPads, and Mac-books).

To keep websites simple, without making them look bland such as in Google’s case, a balanced distribution of content and graphics is required and the use of slightly contrasting colours and clear fonts is key. Colours that are scream, are overtly contrasting, and font sizes that are difficult to read will put a strain on visitors’ eyes. Also, one should break up size-able blocks of text with either spacing or images as appropriate.

2. Clear call to action

User Experience Design (UX) has become a hot topic the past several years, and for very important reasons. UX plays a key role in helping visitors, use, understand, and stick around on your company website. There are several levels of UX that absolutely must be balanced with design if you want the website to provide value. Some of the basics include:

• Build a logical navigation architecture in a hierarchy that makes sense
• Keep the navigation as shallow as possible, and try to avoid building silos within the website where a visitor can get lost
• Put buttons, drop-downs, and other items in logical places where a typical user might find them
• Use language that makes sense to your target audience – i.e. avoid corporate speak, uncommon industry jargon, and vocabulary that is too advanced for your typical customer
• Allow the site room to breathe, and use consistent layouts as much as possible across the site

3. Optimized for mobile friendly

Over the past year or so, mobile browsing has finally surpassed desktop browsing in total volume of searches. If you have been putting off optimization for mobile traffic, you are already behind the curve. Every single website needs to be optimized for mobile visitors.

Responsive websites sense the screen resolution of the device loading the website, and “respond” by resizing or re-flowing the content to best fit those dimensions. It is one website that essentially morphs into the user experience that is best for the device. One set of code, one website to optimize for SEO and ranking.

4. Content

"Content is King". The more relevant and updated content your website have, more will be its usability. Good quality content provides the information user is looking for. Content also allows you to establish yourself as an expert in your field. When your website visitors are looking to make a purchase they will feel more comfortable with your products and services if you have built their trust and confidence through what you have written on your website.

Keyword-filled content is also crucial for getting high search engine rankings. Most Internet users trust search engines to help them find what they are looking for. Taking the time to create high quality content can have huge payoffs through increased search engine rankings

5. Speed

How many seconds will user needs to wait for a page to load before they give up and leave a website Coding, number of graphics, the server speed, traffic volume on the website and the capabilities of a user's computer affects the speed of the website. A fast site is a good user experience (UX), and a satisfying UX leads to higher conversions, and now that Google is pushing so hard in this direction, it is time for us to take action.

People inherently lose patience quickly, and that holds true when visiting a website. The longer a website takes to load, the more likely a person will leave before it fully renders. Beautiful graphics and substantial content become useless if a site’s speed hampers its ability to deliver content quickly.

6. Easy to use

Navigation and links provide opportunities to incorporate design elements in to the website; however, navigation schemes should not be so elaborate that the user has trouble knowing where to click to move to another page. The average visitor’s attention span is a matter of seconds, and if it is hard to find what he or she is looking for, you
will loose that visitor very quickly. Links to your most important pages should be easily found on every page. A good rule of thumb is that every page should be accessible in two clicks from your home page - this may not be possible with larger sites.

A good site navigation is like a GPS that helps user find the relevant content out of your website. If your website has a lot of content, provide a search box so visitors can quickly find what they are looking for. Keep your navigation consistent from page to page to avoid any possible confusion.

Characteristics of a bad website

1. It doesn't fit with business objectives and overlook the target market

• Entry page or home page that does not fit within standard browser window (800 x 600 pixels)
• Frames that make you scroll sideways
• No focal point on the page
• Too many focal points on the page
• Navigation buttons as the only visual interest, especially when they're large (and dorky)
• Cluttered, not enough alignment of elements
• Lack of contrast (in color, text, to create hierarchy of information, etc.)
• Pages that look okay in one browser but not in another

2. Lack of balance between design and content

• Anything that blinks, especially text
• Multiple things that blink
• Rainbow rules (lines)
• Rainbow rules that blink or animate
• "Under construction" signs, especially of little men working
• Animated "under construction" signs
• Animated pictures for email
• Animations that never stop
• Multiple animations that never stop

3. Lack up to date technology

This one is really easy to spot. The news item on the homepage is advertising a Christmas special and its Easter time! If website owners can’t take the time to use their website as a current advertising tool, what is the point of making contact with them. Good websites have accurate information and calendars. They take the time to update their content on a regular basis to ensure visitors return.

4. Plenty of music

Make sure your site cranks up some really loud, meaningless music, so you get everyone browsing the Internet at work in trouble. That is a super-fast way to make someone hit the back button. A lot of people surf the web at work, and could be potential customers, so don't scare them off with pointless music!

5. Website text

You may think web design is all about graphics, colours, pixels, etc. but text is a key part of it that is always overlooked. Text makes up the majority of your site, which is why it is so important that it is presented well on your site.

Some common examples of bad text on a website would include;

• Small text that is difficult to read,
• Illegible fonts (i.e. fonts that look handwritten)
• Text that appears crowded together
• Text colour contrast makes it difficult to read
• Underlined text that is not a link
• Coloured text that is not a link
• Paragraphs in all caps/bold/italic.

If people find it difficult to read the content on your site then they won’t stick around for long. Always, always, always put emphasis on clear and easy to read text on your website.

6. Hard to find contact information

Here’s a situation for you. You end up on a site that is offering the products/services you are looking for. You go through the product/services information and believe they satisfy your needs and requirements perfectly. But, here’s the thing, when you look for the business’s contact information, it isn’t there. There is no form to fill, no phone number, no physical address, nothing. This brings down the UX crashing down.

You have searched the site high and low and are ready to buy. But now, you can't find how to buy it, or how to contact anyone for more information. What is the site for then? No way to buy and no way to contact anyone. Did they forget an important part?

Include contact information, or a contact link, on every page of your site, so your visitors can contact you if they want to buy something or make an inquiry. Maybe your visitor wanted to give you $10,000 for your domain name, but now, unfortunately, you will never know.

7. Not incorporating Google Maps

8.Unfriendly and non-intuitive site navigation

• Unclear navigation; over complex navigation
• Complicated frames, too many frames, unnecessary scroll bars in frames
• Orphan pages (no links back to where they came from, no identification)
• Useless page titles that don't explain what the page is about

9. Stuffing that increases a site's load time

10. Not optimized for for Google or search engine

• 0 keywords in your meta description
• 0 characters in your meta description
• 0 target keywords