5 Tips for a Great Website

Everyone wants to have a great website, but how many of us really manage to achieve it? Actually there are a set of basic requirements that every website should have as a bare minimum. Here are some tips for these basic requirements that will make your website great.

1. Have a Great Landing Page When a visitor lands on your webpage, you will have about 3-4 seconds to catpure his/her attention and make her stay, before she clicks away to another website. So, your landing page or first page has to be great. In fact, focus 80% of your entire web design effort just on the front page. The front page, ideally, should summarize your entire site, and yet not be too lengthy. It should provide navigable links to the key portions of your website.

2. Have a Good Menu Navigation and structure is key. Help your customers navigate your site easily by having a menu with links to your major pages displayed prominently on top of the website. This will help your visitors get to the content that they want. You can also organize the menu with main categories and subcategories via drop down.

3. Have a site map For even more detailed pages that may not be in your menu, help your visitors find these pages at once glance by having a sitemap. A sitemap is a page that contains links to all your pages in your site. It will help not only your visitors with navigation, but also help you in terms of SEO. Note that this is quite different from an XML sitemap (which you should also have), as this is meant for human visitors and hence should look nice.

4. Images vs Text A picture tells a thousand words but so do a thousand words. You have to find the right balance between pictures and text on your website. Pictures will attach your visitors' attention but ultimately the words are what tells the bulk of the content and give useful information. Have both, but make sure your text is concise and easy to read at a glance (hint: use bullets and point forms)

4. Have A Contact Page Have an enquiry form to allow your visitors to easily ask you any questions, or even place an order. There's no point in having a website if you don't have conversions or some means of gathering info about your visitors, so a contact form is key.

That said, above are the basic tips for making a great website, but what will make your website stand out from the rest is going beyond these and really addressing your target audience's needs. We recommend consulting a web designer on this.

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