What Features do the Best Websites Have in Common?
When it comes to finding a web designer, you’ll usually find that they’re lumped into two categories:
- Those who know how to design a beautiful site that looks good but doesn’t really convince users to take any sort of action, and:
- Those who can program the back-end functionalities but the front-end design is complicated and difficult to navigate
But there’s a third class — one that combines the “best of both worlds” to create a website that doesn’t just look good, but it includes all of the best practices for creating a highly successful user experience and greatly increasing the odds that the prospect will become a loyal customer. But what are these features? Let’s take a closer look at what they are and how you can integrate them into your website design:
Mobile Responsive Website Design
One of the biggest challenges for many websites is not to be simply “mobile-friendly” but actually mobile responsive. This means that the website is designed in such a way, that it’s virtually “future-proof” when it comes to mobile devices.
No matter the size of the screen you’re viewing it on, a mobile responsive website design will adjust to fit that screen and still retain its ease of navigation as well as other facets, such as zooming in on pictures, watching videos, and more.
In addition to a mobile-responsive design, it’s a good idea to consider your page loading time too. Google and other search engines look at a site’s mobile ease of use as well as how quickly it loads. Sites that do well on both of these fronts are ranked better than those who do not, no matter how enticing their content might be.
Consider How Your Content is Displayed
Another point to keep in mind when it comes to best practices for your website design is how your content is actually displayed. Notice how on our own website, we break up the content with small chunks of text that can be read easily on any device — whether it’s a PC, a laptop, a smartphone, or another device.
Keeping text in small chunks like this not only increases readability (especially on small screens), but even for longer blog posts, it helps prevent eye fatigue and strain. In addition, breaking up your posts with relevant images (charts, graphs, or other examples) helps reinforce what you’re sharing in your text.
Optimize Every Post for Search Engines
It should go without saying that no matter what you’re writing about, your post needs to be properly optimized for the search engines. This means choosing a clear, concise set of keywords, description, tags, and relevant alt text for your images, plus breaking up your content with headlines appropriately.
It also means choosing a good title and putting as much information as you can that’s relevant and high-quality. This, coupled with low loading time and mobile-responsive design, does much of the heavy lifting in ranking your new website design.
Always Be Testing and Improving
Split testing is another area of your website design that’s seldom talked about, but that can have major repercussions in terms of improving your site design and finding out what resonates with your target audience. There are plenty of split testing platforms out there that can help make this process easier, but as you continue to determine which things your users prefer, you’ll continue making changes to your site that support those changes.
These changes could be anything from button color to layout to navigation to product displays. The important thing is to have a system in place that allows you to test easily and update your site in such a way as to reflect those changes. Your site should never be a “once and done” project, but an ongoing work of art that you keep refining in order to be the very best in your respective industry.
Need Help with Your Website Design?
As you can see, this list is by no means exhaustive, but it does cover the basics in terms of the best practices that all of the highest-ranking websites have in common. If you need help getting your website to this level, contact the professional website designers at Workdom!
With our proven track record of designing high quality, high converting websites that are loved by their target audience, we can help you take the first steps toward a website that ticks all the boxes in terms of best practices. Whether it’s a new site from scratch or a redesign, contact us today to learn more about our dedicated, professional website design services!
Originally published at https://www.workdom.io on February 5, 2021.
