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May
May
4 Ideal Website Qualities
4 Ideal Website Qualities
There are hundreds of thousands of websites on the Internet, each of them catering to the needs of some kind of audience. They’ve been designed and hosted for a reason, but no matter why they’re on the net, they don’t stay popular very long if they don’t have the qualities that an ideal website should possess. I’m not talking of fancy designs from branded designers or highly ranked sites that people access by typing in the URL. Rather, I’m referring to those sites that are thrown up by search engines in response to your query – these sites gain in popularity and esteem only if they provide the visitor with:
- Time: Who wants to wait around for more than a few seconds for a page to load? If your site does not load fast, people tend to move on to the next relevant search return that Google has coughed up. So it is to your advantage to minimize all the jazz on your pages and stick to providing only what is necessary in a simple yet pleasing template that is easy on the eye and the ear. Not many people enjoy blaring music or a voiceover when they step into your site and neither do they take kindly to text that is too tiny or too large – do don’t make them waste time on adjusting page settings before they get to read what’s on your site. Time is of the essence when it comes to good web design.
- Ease: Your audience must be able to navigate easily within your site and be able to find the information they are looking for. If they feel lost or have to search for the right buttons, the first thing they’re going to click is the cross sign at the top right corner of your browser to close the page. So make navigation as simple as possible so that even lay users find your site easy to use.
- Quality: It doesn’t matter that Google or any other search engine has pushed you to the top of their search results; what is really important is that the person who uses those results to click on your link be satisfied with what they see in your site. They need to be assured that you are providing them with quality information that is timely, accurate and updated. To ensure this, you need to check your site regularly, update it based on the current trend, and use feedback (comments and complaints) to see how you can improve it further.
- Relevance: And finally we come to relevance – if I had a dime for every site that I went to that had totally irrelevant information from the search string I had typed in, I’d be a rich woman by now. I’m not talking of the ambiguity of the English language and that there are times when the search engine bots get your meaning wrong. I’m talking about the content of the site that is absolute crap that fills the pages just to comply with what the experts call SEO. In their obsession with keywords, most sites fill up their pages with random text interspersed with keywords, which makes no sense at all to the site visitor. If your content is not relevant to the search string and uses trickery to get people to visit, you’re not going to be around for much longer on the web.
By-line:
This article is contributed by Susan White, who regularly writes on the subject of High Speed Internet Service. She invites your questions, comments at her email address: susan.white33@gmail.com.
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Justin McGill is a web marketing professional and runs a successful Small Business SEO Firm. He is the founder and CEO of SEORCHERS (read: [surch-ers]) - a local web marketing firm specializing in organic search engine optimization (SEO) with a focus on converting visitors into clients. He is available for SEO Consulting and now you can connect with him on Google+!.
Justin McGill is a web marketing professional and runs a successful Small Business SEO Firm. He is the founder and CEO of SEORCHERS (read: [surch-ers]) - a local web marketing firm specializing in organic search engine optimization (SEO) with a focus on converting visitors into clients. He is available for SEO Consulting and now you can connect with him on Google+!.Related posts:
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You are SO right. I HATE waiting for a site to load and poor navigation is another one of my big irritants.
.-= Ida Weber@rose bush care´s last blog ..Climbing Rose Trellis =-.
All these tips are gold. People may be able to tolerate a slow loading page or not the best navigation but if they find that your site isn’t relevant to what they are looking for, you’ll see your4 bounce rate at 80% or higher hah.
Thanks for the tips.
.-= Josiah@Tumblr Layouts´s last blog ..Tumbl News =-.
ya you are right about the four points. i have seen many sites which ranked high in google but when i go inside they just look crap. i just leave such sites within seconds.
Thanks for let me know about ideal qualities for having quality site. Hope it would be help me to make my site quality one.
.-= Help desk Services´s last undefined ..If you register your site for free at =-.
Your points are right but beside these things, you need to take care of meta tags and keyword placement and properly planned off-page seo activities to let people and search engine know about your website.
All of these techniques is golden. People may be able to tolerate the slow loading page or not the best, but if they find the site navigation is not about what they are looking for
.-= McGonagall´s last blog ..Accurate load regulation power scheme designed on the basis of LT4180 =-.
Site load speed is becoming a ranking factor, but not a big factor according to Matt Cutts. However, the knock on effect on bounce rates is a second ranking factor for page load speeds. Websites are okay, but the WordPress blogs with multiple plug-ins, hence multiple css/javascript files is a bit of an issue. You can comnine them and minify them, but how do you remove them at a later date?
.-= Protein Shakes´s last blog ..Biceps Curls – Gain An Inch On Each Arm Within 30 Days =-.
Quite simple and useful tips. Specially related to site speed. thanks for sharing this post.
.-= Rakesh Solanki´s last blog ..Check Your PassWord Strength With Password Checker =-.
I’ve been a publicist online since 1996 and almost since the beginning of “ecommerce,” loading time has been a factor. Visitors simply will not wait for a site to load even if you tell them it’s going to take a minute and now 14 years later, we expect sites to load even faster. If they don’t the website publisher is the only one that loses so we might as well embrace the fact. All of your points are right on target and should be the absolutes for building a great site.
Anne Marie´s last [type] ..Online Marketing Course: How To Find Adsense Alternatives
This guide is great! It is so true that websites should watch it’s load time. I experienced visiting one site and the page loaded about a minute. At first, i waited but when i went to the inner pages, i didn’t hesitate to close the site and look for another one.
This is a great post. The ease and comfort of website users is very important factor to consider. Aside from that, website should contain relevant information about your industry.
I’ve never know that the four qualities of a website presented on this post are the necessary aspects of a website to attract and retain visitors.
Great article by Susan White. I was wondering Justin, what do you think is a satisfactory page load time?
The reason I ask is because I recently tested godaddy’s cloud hosting and experienced 14 second load times. Their customer support checked my website and said that it met their standard for being under 15 seconds. They promptly refunded me!
I build on WordPress and use wp-superchache for most smaller sites under 300 pages, and w3c for the larger ones. This keeps my page load times under 2 seconds, but I am still jealous of the sub 1 second websites.