1.Visual Charm
The importance of a first impression should never be overlooked, you only have 7 seconds to grab your user’s attention before they move onto the next well-designed website that does grab their attention.
Websites are vital for businesses to connect with clients and customers. You must consider your website’s visual appearance and how it represents your business and your brand, is it doing you justice!
It must be stylish and creative, yet not overpowering or cluttered. On websites user experience is everything! When was the last time you stepped back and really looked at your website?
2. Responsive
Your website must be responsive, that is it… End of story!
More websites are visited every day on mobile devices than on PC’s, if your website is not responsive and easy to use then your user will click off the site and move onto the next site that is.
If your website isn’t mobile-friendly, your Google search ranking will be compromised. Most visitors are on mobile devices and if your site isn’t mobile-friendly Google will move you down the list… Way Down!
In this day and age a responsive website is a crucial component, not just an optional one.
3. Content
Website content should always be kept up to date and relevant or it’s useless and forgotten about. A great example of this is TV’s, only a few years ago 1080p resolution was Top Dog but today everyone is talking 4K and HDR. Someone looking for a TV today is not searching for 1080p, the relevance has gone and your website is obsolete.
Is your website easy to read and move around? Having a lot of content is great for a website but it must be easy for your users to navigate and find the info they require. String Search Functions on all new websites is a must!
Like mobile-friendly sites, content is another aspect that affects search engine rankings. Search engines rank sites based on how much content is presented on the website and how often it is visited, if you have loads of useless info on your site it will hurt your rankings but if you don’t have enough you’ll never be found. It’s a balancing act that professional developers work on day in and day out.
4. Is your website even you anymore?
You might have been running your company for years then all of a sudden BOOM! You pivot into a new market and it’s full steam ahead. Does your website accurately reflect this new direction? Is your business branding, company culture or even target market still the same? You’ve changed in a major way, a band-aid of content is not always the best fix for a website.
Ensuring your website aligns with your brand and who you are is one of the most effective ways to show you’re authentic and built trust and rapport with your users.
5. Your website ain’t that Flash
There was a trend a few years ago to make websites out of Flash, at the time it was the only way to make websites that stood out from the crowd. Objects moving and jumping around the screen, it was great!
Then the fundamental building blocks of the internet HTML and CSS caught up, you could code sites to move and change without needing Flash so it became unsupported and after a few years it actually became a problem.
Similar to an out-dated design, Flash ages your website. Flash is not compatible with all devices or search engines and this can hurt your site traffic. By default now most flash objects are not loaded and appear as an error with an (X) on them. Not a good look!
Because the speed at which the internet grows and changes year-on-year, outdated software that is not updated can cause crashes and major issues. This is now what Flash websites do, they crash most of the time.
It got to a point where Apple Products now don’t even load Flash Objects when browsing on iPads and iPhones, you know… The two most popular mobile platforms on the most popular way to surf the web!
