What Makes a Good Website

You might have heard that the first impression is the last. Your website is your business’s first interaction or you can say the first impression on the potential customers. It takes about 0.05 seconds (50 milliseconds) for users to form an opinion about your website that determines whether they’ll stay or leave. So, people often ask what makes a good website. Functionality, UX, or SEO? Unfortunately, there is no universal solution because it depends upon the kind of website you want to have, the goal you want to achieve, and the market segment you want to target. However, certain elements can help you build a good website. So, in this blog post, we will tell you what exactly makes a good website. It’s not just about looking good—it’s about functionality, user experience, SEO, and more.

At Centric, we combine design expertise with cutting-edge technology to create websites that not only look great but work flawlessly. Let's explore how we do it and what are the elements that make up a good website to drive better user engagement, conversions, and growth.

6 Top Qualities That a Website Must Have

Design:

A well-designed website serves as a showroom or storefront. It attracts visitors and compels them to explore more. Make sure your website looks modern and clean. Choose the color schemes and typography wisely and use the space smartly to make it visually appealing to the users. Each element of the website must complement the brand and provide guidance and required information to the users.

Another significant tip is to keep the website’s design mobile-friendly. Over 54% of global web traffic now comes from mobile devices and if your site isn’t optimized for mobile, you’re likely losing a huge chunk of potential customers. Mobile-friendly websites are also ranked higher by Google, giving you an SEO boost right off the bat.

Key design principles to keep in mind:

• Consistency: Be consistent while designing the website. Use a certain color palette, font, and layout all through the website.

• White space: Leave the white space where necessary to avoid clutter and make the site more readable.

• Color psychology: Colors influence emotions and behavior. For instance, blue can evoke trust, while red creates urgency so make sure you use the colors appropriately.

User Experience (UX):

While designing the website, the designer should religiously focus on user experience. User experience (UX) defines how users interact with the website. A great UX design refers to a design that meets users’ needs quickly and efficiently. If visitors struggle to find what they want, they’ll leave your site and turn to a competitor.

Here are some key elements of a great UX:

• Intuitive navigation: A website must be easy to navigate. Menus and links are positioned wisely so that users may be able to understand the steps.  

• Clear CTAs (Call-to-Actions): Users need to know exactly what you want them to do next. A CTA should stand out and be easy to find. Whether it’s “Contact Us,” “Buy Now,” or “Learn More,” make sure it’s clear and compelling.

• Fast loading times: Speed matters in UX. A 1-second delay in page load time can increase frustration and reduce conversions by 7%.

Relevant Content

A good copy speaks to the visitors. No matter how well you have designed your website, if the copy is not relevant, up-to-date, and engaging, you will lose the opportunity. A personalized copy that addresses the challenges, needs, and pain points and suggests a solution always drives more conversion than generic content.

Here are a few Important content tips:

• Speak directly to your audience: Use language that resonates with them, addressing their needs, challenges, and desires.

• Use storytelling: People connect with stories. Craft narratives that convey your brand's values and build emotional connections.

• Clear value propositions: Tell visitors clearly why they should trust you. Value should be all through your website’s content. 

Moreover, if the content is up-to-date and concrete, it helps build trust, authority, and credibility among prospective clients. Content marketing is another way to market your business efficiently. This marketing technique involves producing high-quality content and publishing it on the website. Make sure, this content is informative, useful, and engaging for the website's users.  

The most effective content marketing strategies that can give a kick to business include:

• Blogging. Blogging leads to high customer engagement. The technique involves publishing articles, pictures, and other forms of content to provide information, create awareness, and market business.

• eBooks. Offering free eBooks is a great idea. The websites that offer free ebooks covering relevant topics, build an authentic subscriber list.

• Webinars. Hosting a live webinar is another cool tip to engage the audience. By offering live or pre-recorded webinars on the website, businesses provide information about their products or services and answer audience queries.

SEO: What Makes You Visible

If you want to rank your website on top of the search engines, you should rigorously work on strong SEO strategies. Suppose, your website has an excellent design and functionality but what if it is not found on the internet? Think about how people would find it! So, besides design, functionality, and performance, it is also important to implement SEO to make your site rank higher.

SEO is a long domain to talk about. We will definitely tell you about it in detail in the next editorial. For now, it is important to understand these few practices that can make your site rank higher on SERP.

• Keyword research. A good website should be equipped with the right keywords to ensure that the right people find it.

• Technical SEO. It is also important to optimize the website for proper indexing. A good website must load quickly and must be mobile-friendly. It should be free from broken links too.

• Create quality backlinks. Building high-quality backlinks from authentic resources helps to make the website more authoritative and relevant.

• Content optimization. Content optimization refers to incorporating relevant keywords in the content. Optimizing content also involves using heading tags and other HTML elements.

Performance

Performance refers to how quickly the website loads on the web browser. Faster websites are considered high-performing websites. Visitors do not like slow websites and abandon those that take more time to load. Moreover, page speed is also an important factor for Google ranking. Google does not rank slow websites higher. Research by Akamai Technology reveals that Two extra seconds of load time more than doubles a page’s bounce rate. So, Now you can understand how important it is to optimize the performance of the website
.You can measure the performance of your website using various free tools like Google Lighthouse and Cloudfare Observatory. Now, let us list down some ways how you can speed up your website.

Optimize images

Images make the websites slow. You will often notice that they take the longest to load. It is due to larger image sizes than HTML and CSS files. However, optimizing the images can help you improve your website’s loading time. Reduce the resolution and dimensions of the image to help the website work faster.  

Minimize HTTP Requests

Your website has assets like images, scripts, and CSS files that need a request to load. It is called an HTTP request. The more requests your page has, the longer it takes to load. If you minimize the assets that need to be loaded, the website will speed up.

Use Browser Caching

When we visit a website, our browser stores some elements like images. This makes it quicker to load the page on their next visit. By setting up browser caching, you can make sure that frequently visited pages load faster by instructing the browser to store certain static files for a longer period.

Minimize the Use of External Scripts

External scripts, like third-party commenting systems, pop-ups, and plugins, can slow down your website. Each external script must load from another server, which can take time. So, Try to limit the number of external scripts you use to speed up load times.

Minimize Redirects

Redirects happen when a user is sent from one page to another automatically. They are sometimes necessary but using too many redirects can increase loading time. So, try to minimize their use and remove unnecessary redirects.

Security: Building Trust with Your Users

People open and return to those sites that are secure. They only provide sensitive data to trustworthy sites. So, it is important to keep the website secure if you want to drive more traffic. 

Here are a few simple ways how you can make your website secure.

1. Update your website regularly

2. Use a reliable hosting provider

3. Update the security plugins often

4. Regularly scan your website with a website scanner for malware and vulnerabilities

5. Use a web application firewall to avoid malicious traffic

6. Install an SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) Certificate

7. Use strong passwords to protect the website from hackers

8. Run regular backups

Summarizing The Must-Haves for a Website That Works

So, what makes a good website?

In a nutshell, A good website is a blend of compelling design, intuitive user experience, high-quality content, solid SEO, fast performance, and top-notch security. When all these elements work together, a good website pops up.

So, is your website ready to deliver the experience your users expect?

At Centric, we bring all these elements together and thoughtfully build websites.  If you want to make your online presence stand out, why not partner with us to create a website that truly works for you?