13 Characteristics of a great website

A website is the online face of your business so it's extremely important that it leaves a good impression on your customers.  Here we list down some of the most important characteristics that a website should possess.

Grammatical errors - Grammatical errors and spelling mistakes are as big of a turn off as a beautiful girl with a bad breadth (Eww!). It may look simple and easy but a lot of companies tend to overlook this mistake. Always, I mean always proofread the content of your website a couple of times to make sure that no grammatical errors are lurking on your web property. If grammar isn't your cup of tea then it's probably best to hire a professional content writer and let her do job for you while you take care of the other things mentioned below.

Sticky content - "What is Sticky Content?" You may ask. Don't worry even I didn't know about this jargon until a couple of days back. Well, sticky content is the content that actually makes your visitors stick to your website coz it's so gooooood. So, how exactly do you make your content stick? Try to think from the perspective of your visitor and provide useful information; information that your visitor wants to know. If the content is well written and informational, people would come back to your website.

Logo - In a research conducted by Missouri University of Science and Technology, participants were asked to rate sites on the basis of visual appeal. They spent an average of 20 seconds on 25 websites and it was observed that on average visitors spent 6.48 seconds focusing just on the logo. Enough said. Go and get a logo, and listen…get a good one. Let us know if you need any help.

Effective Navigation - Effective navigation is one of the most important trait of a good website. Here are a few things to keep in mind while deciding the navigation on the website:

- Navigation should be clutter free

- Limit the number of menu items

- Drop-down menu and sub-navigation are helpful for large websites

- Use Internal links to help user navigate through the website following the natural progression of the content

Clean, Fresh Design - According to Dr. Hong Sheng, assistant professor of business and information technology at Missouri S&T "A user's first impressions of a website can determine whether that user forms a favourable or unfavourable view of that organization". Your website is the online face of your business and well defined facial contours (in this case a great looking website) define how good a face (business) looks. So make your business look good by getting a great looking website now.

Mobile Compatibility - With more and more people using their mobile phones to access the Internet, creating a mobile optimized website is no longer an option but a necessity.

You can start by checking how your existing website appears on mobile. If your website cannot be accessed on mobile or does not fit properly on the screen then you should contact a mobile website builder and get your mobile optimized site ready. Our geeks specialize in developing such websites so let us know if you need any help.

Contact Information - Oh I love your website and I would love to use your services but Wait how I do I contact you; I can't find the darn contact info. Never mind I'll find someone else. Oops guess what? You just missed a sale because you couldn't give your prospect your number/email. I find this mistake in a lot of websites. For some unknown reasons, businesses hide their contact information in some lonely corner of their website. This gives a really hard time to their prospects who want to contact them. Make sure you do not commit that mistake. Put your contact information in a place where it's easily visible.

Easy to load - No one likes a website that takes forever to load (not even Google). Macromedia Flash animations are a strict NO here since a website loaded with Flash takes longer to open and is not search engine friendly (it's almost impossible to optimize a website that is completely built in Flash). If a major portion of your target audience does not have fast broadband connections then its best to keep your website simple and easy to load.

Credibility - Internet is a place where anyone can wear a mask and portray to be a highly successful, legitimate business. Just look at all those gazillion business websites that claim to be mobile app development expert but are nowhere even close. Due to so many scams and Fraud happening all around, people have become more and more wary of dealing with new companies. A visitor would not do business with you until he can completely trust you. So how do you build trust with your visitor in such a short time? Well, there are a lot of things you can do on your website like:

- Avoid any kind of errors - This could include broken links, typographical errors etc.

- Don't display ads from every vent possible; it looks spammy.

- Make sure your website looks professional and is easily navigable

- Make it easy to contact you by making your contact information easily visible

- Have a well written 'About us' page that shows that you are an organization built and run by real people

- Gather some real testimonials from your clients and display them on your website

- Update content regularly. Websites that have stale information on them just portray a negligent attitude.

'About Us' Page - Customers or Prospects love to read about real people who run the company as it helps them feel more comfortable in dealing with them. It is a good practice to a have picture of your team and a little description about everyone on your 'About Us' page.

Reliable hosting plan - Your website should always be up and running.  At a time when a prospect is actively looking for your website and its unavailable (due to server problems) guess what he is most likely to do? Yes, he is going to choose your competitor over you. Choosing a reliable hosting partner is not an option but a necessity.

Lead Capture form - A lot of times visitors may just want you to contact them. Lead capture form gives you an opportunity to get the contact information of people who may be genuinely interested in your offerings. With the help of a lead capture form you can build a database of potential customers that you can market to.