You always know if you made your design right because people visit your site way more often and may even compliment you on that. Other than that, your site can get some exposure via word of mouth. Is’t that awesome? It goes without saying that an amazing website design is not going to cut if if you don’t back it up with top notch services or a breath-taking product that you offer on your site. That’s basically what you need in order to get web-famous, for lack of a better word. There are a bunch of other features that are common among well-known and respected websites out there. That’s exactly what we’re gonna take a closer look at.
Convenient Search
One of the things that defines what you think about a particular site is how the search feature works. As a matter of fact, it’s pretty easy to explain that. Thing is, you usually land on a site if you search for some specific info. If you can’t find it on the page that you landed on, you start looking around for the search feature so that you can quickly make sure that the site does not have the info you’re actually in search for. For starters, you need to ensure that the search feature is at the most comfortable spot on your site. It should catch the eye pretty easily and the user is not supposed to waste a few years until he or she finds it. What’s more, your site search should be site-wide so that the users can always take advantage of that.
Friendly Navigation
Decent sites tend to have a simple navigation structure which you can easily use right off the bat, even if you don’t have a Ph.D. Such sites usually have categories with subcategories. Plus they don’t use ‘surprise’ subcategories. ‘Surprise’ subcategories are those that works as follows. When you roll over a menu button and it shows a subcategory for no obvious reason because there’s no sign on the button that would hint about expandable options. As a rule of thumb, you want to use a star or some other sign on your menu button if it has a drop-down with more options.
Branding
Since your website is the first thing that represents your brand online, you need to do your best in terms of your website design and other related aspects. Aside from the overall design of your site, you need to keep an eye on your logo because that little thing will be used both all around the web and possibly off-line as well. Your logo should be easy-to-recognize so people can easily figure out who’s in the house without any guesswork at all. Other than that, be sure to make it scalable, which translates into asking your web designer to provide you with a vector format version of your logo.
Call-to-action
And probably the most crucial component would be your call-to-action because you run your site to sell something, right? Your site’s visitors are busy people and they don’t really have the time to browse through all your site until they finally find the product or services you’re trying to offer on your site. It makes perfect sense to make it totally clear what your site is all about within a few seconds after a potential customer lands on your site because if you fail doing so, he or she may never come back because there’s no reason. You just did not give one! They don’t have a clue about what you offer 🙂
Conclusion
Once you make sure that your site meets all the basic requirements, you’re good to go and finally launch your amazing site off the ground. Though I’ve highlighted the most important items (at least I did my best), there may be other less obvious but equally crucial things to keep in mind. The bottom line is that it really depends on the audience that you have coming to your site. Be sure to adjust your navigation, search, call-to-action and general branding to meet the needs of your target audience. That’s what matters most at the end of the day.
Vitaliy Kolos is an SEO and marketing guy at WebDesign.org. He’s sure that sites should cater both for the user and search engines, but the format must be a priority.