What are the key elements of a good website?

I am often asked the question "What makes a good business website?" Probably the most important element of a good site is providing visitors with quality information. For a business website, this might include: A list of products or services Advantages your business provides over your competitors Answers to questions that customers frequently ask. A company history or profile Contact information such as phone numbers, business hours, maps, and other helpful information.

by Jeff Lowe

The best websites not only provide information about your business -- but anticipate and answer questions that visitors may have.

I have plenty of information -- now what?

Providing quality information to your customers is the first step -- organizing that information and making information easy to find is next.

Studies have show that the average attention span of a web-surfer is only a few seconds. You have a very short opportunity to "grab" them and keep them at your site.

Layout and organization of your site can make a big difference in your visitors experience. Here are some tips to consider when designing a site:

Website Text

• Make sure that you text is easy to read for your visitors. Don't place text over backgrounds that make it difficult to read.
• Try to use common fonts that are available on most computers. Deciding to use that cute "Fancy-Script" font may look great on your computer -- but anyone without the font will see plain block text.
• Since web surfers have a short attention span, you should make text easy to scan. This can be accomplished thorugh liberal use of bullets and headings.
• You should also break large blocks of text into smaller two or three sentence paragraphs.

Navigation

• Make sure that your website navigation is in a consistant location on each page of your site.
  
• Avoid HTML frames. Frames confuse users trying to bookmark your pages as well as search engines trying to index your site.
• Web sites with over 10-15 pages should probably contain a site map. This benefits both visitors and search engines trying to crawl your site.

Other Factors

• Keep the look and feel of your website consistent. Look at popular websites to determine color schemes that are easy to read and visually appealing.
• Make sure your pages download quickly. Avoid music, video, flash animation and large images, which can cause you to loose visitors with slow connections.

Of course this list could go on and on -- but the idea is simple.

If you provide website visitiors with quality information in a clean consistant, easy-to-read format, they will keep coming back again and again.