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Website builder blog – A professional, user-friendly, and effective website exists of 8 characteristics. We list them below and explain how you can evaluate these characteristics yourself.
Website Builder: 8 characteristics of an effective website
This manual is intended for entrepreneurs and self-employed people who wonder what a good website should look like. With this knowledge, you can confidently evaluate various web design agencies based on, for example, their portfolio. Once you work with a professional web design partner, you can think along with the tips below.
1. Clear targeting
Do you see a visually striking call within 3 seconds that stimulates the visitor to take action?
What is the main purpose of your website? Do you want to generate more online sales?
Pick a clear target
One single target. It is advisable to pursue one single goal. Combining multiple goals brings risk along that the website visitor gets signals in different directions during his visit. You do not want that. You want everything to point in one direction.
A precise goal. Formulate your goal very precisely. This makes it easier to adjust each part of your website accordingly. Generating more income is too vague.
Examples. Some good examples of website goals:
- Subscribers to your newsletter
- Improve relationship with customers
- Quotation requests via your website or by telephone
- Reservations or bookings via your website or by telephone
- Attract extra visitors to your store
- Online sales
Secondary Goals
There are also secondary goals, which can easily be combined with one of the above goals. For example, increasing brand awareness, informing customers they can count on 24/7 support instead of having to call you all the time (eg address, opening hours, price list, etc.), etc.
Translation to call to action
If you want something, sometimes you just have to ask. Ask your website visitors to do what you expect from them. This is often called the call to action. Examples: Subscribe now to our newsletter!, Participate in the competition!, Request a free quote, Book online, Buy now
Short and powerful. You notice that every call to action is formulated briefly and powerfully. Preferably in the imperative way, which is the most action-oriented approach. Besides, Your call to action must at appear in the visible section at the top of your home page and at the bottom of all other pages. It must stand out. That is why the call to action is often placed in a framework and reasonably space is provided for. The call to action is almost always clickable, with the link leading to a next window in which the visitor can proceed to take effective action.
2. Customer orientated
Is it immediately clear who the target audience of the website is?
Your website should not be about yourself, but about your customers. Few are interested in your history, strengths, awards or unique approach. Your website visitors only want to know how you are going to solve their problem. Therefore follow these tips: Replace the words “I” and “We” with “you” or “you” everywhere. Describe who you are, what your target audience is. Clarify which problem you solve and preferably also for which price. Do not mention the technical characteristics, but the advantages the customer gets from your solution compared to that of your competitors. Check which important questions your customers are asking and make sure that you answer them all on your website. Do not create pages that do not answer any customer request. These only ensure that your customer finds the important pages less easy. Speak in a language your customer understands, instead of trying to make an impression with jargon. A good website is therefore focused on the visitor, not on the owner of the website.
3. Get to the point
Does the website count a limited number of pages and are the texts short and to the point?
Your website visitors are impatient: The more information you provide, the less you will read. People have very little patience when they surf the web. When someone hits your website, you have to awaken his or her interest within a few seconds or your visitor has already left. (Tip: Check your websites bounce rate. Anything above 60% is a problem!)
Less is more
Limit the amount of information on your website. You thought one A4 was enough? No! Time to cut. Show only the red meat. In most cases, 3 to 4 short paragraphs are more than enough. If people only spend a few seconds on your website, you can not distract them with all kinds of irrelevant information. You want them to immediately see the main message. It goes without saying that you limit yourself as much as possible to conveying that main message and omitting the details. The reason that many people fill their website with all kinds of details is because they are not aware what the most important message is. Think carefully about this! Do not try to entertain your visitors! Your visitors are not interested in beautiful animations or technical design delights. They come to your website to solve a problem. Everything that distracts them from it is a waste of their time and your budget.
4. Be crystal clear
When you ‘enter’ the website, is it immediately clear what you are doing/offering?
This has everything to do with removing mental barriers. People experience all sorts of questions during their visit to your website. For example: “what is this about?”, “Where do I click now?”, “How can I contact?”, Etc. A clear website answers each of these questions the moment the visitor asks them or, better still, just before. Avoiding questions is better than answering questions. The first thing you see The first thing your website visitors see is the top part of your homepage. A clear website provides at least the following crucial information in this visible section in order to avoid asking questions immediately:
Company name (logo)
Slogan
Service or product offered an
Attractive call to action
Link to contact page
5. User-friendliness
Does the website count at most 5 pages in the main navigation and do you find the contact details at a glance?
Make sure that people can navigate to the page they want in a matter of seconds. One long list with 10 pages or more is not a good navigation structure. Your website visitors do not know what the most important pages are in this list. If you think that your visitors find the pages “price”, “product properties” and “contact” the most important of the 10 pages on your website, put these pages in the main navigation and link to the other pages via a secondary navigation or via links in the pages themselves. Left Put enough internal links. These are links that go from one page on your website to the other page on your website. By placing these links in places where you know that the visitor poses certain questions, you reduce the chance that he will drop out. Also make sure that the links are visually easy to distinguish, eg. via a different color and/or bold font. Contact details Put your contact details preferably on every page, for example at the bottom of the footer website. Especially when customers often need your telephone number or address, this is essential. In addition, create a contact page with your company name, address, telephone number, email address and possibly a ticket and contact form. Keep the contact form as short as possible. Here too, the less fields one has to fill in, the greater the chance that something will be filled in at all. If you have enough with name and telephone, do not ask for an email address.
6. Mobile experience
When you visit the website on a mobile device, is the content clearly displayed?
The internet is becoming more mobile every day. People not only search information on the internet from their computer in the living room, but also from their smartphone or tablet. If your website is unreadable on a smartphone, you visitor and therefore lead, is gone! It is therefore important to optimize the mobile views of your website. Making a mobile version of your website often costs the same amount as your website itself. A more affordable alternative is to make your website “responsive”. This means that the design is automatically adapted to smaller screens, so that everything remains user-friendly and workable.
7. Attractiveness
Do you think the website is beautiful and pleasant to look at?
People consciously or unconsciously form an image of your business based on your website. An attractive website contributes positively to your image, while an ugly website can damage your image. This is largely subjective, but we try to give some guidelines. Some of these guidelines also apply to painting, the design of car models, etc .: At most 2 or 3 different colors are used (in addition to shades of gray). The colors fit well together. The whole has a symmetrical and harmonious appearance. Sufficient whitespace is used to prevent the website, and different elements, from looking cluttered. At most 2 different fonts are used and 3 different font sizes. Next, there must always be at least one creative element, something surprising. Finally, all photos are of the same quality and breathe consistency. Old-fashioned illustrations or clip art is anno 2018 like cursing in the church as an old Dutch saying goes!
8. Findability
Do you find the website when searching for it specifically in Google?
Importance of findability
In many cases, the purpose of a website is to attract new customers. It goes without saying that it is a huge plus if the website is easily found on Google. These are free leads. A website that is not found in search engines like Google, loses a large part of its usefulness. It can only be used as an information channel for customers or as a supporting sales tool for convincing potential customers.
Minimum requirement
Free potential customers via Google sounds like holy music to many, but it is not easy. Not everyone can be in first place in Google. So a lot of money is invested to take that first (or second, third, …) place. So you have to decide for yourself how much budget you have to score high in Google. And that depends on what a potential customer found you through Google can deliver you. The minimum requirement, however, is that you will be found in Google if people search you. If you type in your company name and related services in Google and your does not show …, then something is wrong.
