Top Tips for a Successful Website

These days most businesses, regardless of size, realise the benefits they can enjoy through setting up an effective website.  Your website is effectively your shop window, open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, to attract and retain customers to your business.

But what makes a website work well and what are the pitfalls inherent in designing and setting up a site that will genuinely help your business attract more customers?  It’s not uncommon to hear business owners complain that they never get any business through their website and usually this is because the site is either too hard to find (ie, not getting picked up by potential visitors who search online using a search engine) or the information presented on the site is confusing to the visitor. 

A well designed website can certainly lead to increased business, but sadly there are a great many poor websites that are underperforming, failing to deliver results, and in some cases having an adverse effect on the reputation of the business in question.

By following a few simple rules, it’s possible to create a good-looking website that will really give your business the best chance of being noticed.  This short report details some of the most common website ‘mistakes’ along with some advice on how to avoid making them! 

THREE GOLDEN RULES

A successful website is like a combination of ingredients coming together in the right combination to produce a highly effective result.  Getting it completely right takes time and ongoing effort, but follow these golden rules and you’ll certainly be on the right track.  Your website should be:

Easy to navigate – your website should be as user-friendly as possible.  You want to make it as easy as possible for your site visitors to find the information they need quickly and painlessly, without having to wade through reams of useless information to get there.   Aim to make information available in no more than 3 mouse clicks.

Easy to read – Choose your text and background colours carefully.  A general rule is to use dark text against a light background.  Remember to make the text large enough to be easily read.

Easy on the eye – Keep your page layout neat and tidy and avoid using animations: they can be distracting and in some cases slow down the load time of your pages.  Remember, the more complicated you make your pages, the more likely people will give up and click away:  keep it simple.  Make sure your pages can be viewed without the need to scroll horizontally across the screen.  Vertical scrolling is acceptable however.