There are all types of websites and many different ways to evaluate if a site is “good” or not. It’s a subjective idea that can be measured objectively. But measurements only work if you know what you are aiming for.
A good website balances between visitors finding what visitors are looking for and visitors finding what authors want visitors to find.
The following components give you the path to begin your plan for building a “good” website.
Audience
Identifying your web audience is crucial to almost every decision you make for the site. The more focused and narrow the audience is defined the better. This isn’t to suggest that other audiences can benefit from your site. Instead this is to focus your efforts. Imagine, if you can, your typical user of the site. Keep that person in mind as you work through the planning. Broad but useful audience ranges may include demographics such as age, gender, and geography, comfort level with technology, and occupation.
Goal
What is it you want your audience to do when they come to your site? Is it to find a resource, learn about you, subscribe to a newsletter, or maybe make a purchase? Decide what the main goal of the site should be and focus the design towards that goal.
Marketing
You may end up with the best designed and most technologically sound website in the world, but if no one visits then it has been a waste of your resources. Decide what principle way people will find out about your site. Will you rely on search engines to dive traffic to the site? Will you use traditional offline marketing practices to get people to remember your web address? Will you email a group of people or encourage others to link to your site? These decisions will affect how you design and provide content for the site.
Design
The design should match both what your audience would expect and how you want to be seen. A good website will have a consistent layout and branding on every page. Pick a technology that will enable your goals to be accomplished easily. Who will be responsible for providing content to the site such as the visitors or a team of authors? Do you want them to interact with the author and each other? Navigation of the site should be intuitive and pages should load quickly.
Content
Text: Content read online is consumed quickly by visitors so writing should get to the point quickly. Pages should be easy to visually scan for relevancy and topics. It is recommended to have a section or page that explains who you are, what you are about, and how to contact you. It is also valuable to have a date on each page of content so others know its age relevancy.
Images: Photos and graphics can be useful in enhancing what is written on a page. To keep these images from being a distraction, however, they should be optimized for the web (resolution of 72 dpi, resized to needed dimensions, and uploaded) for fast load time and visual enhancement. Use a graphics program to make the necessary changes to an image instead of using HTML code to manipulate the image.
Media: Embedded audio, video, and flash can be very helpful in communicating a message online. It is best if these do not play automatically and are used sparingly since they can slow down the load time of a web page. Allow the user to initiate the playing of the media. Your challenge is to make it compelling for them to want to “press play”.
Measure
Various sites measure different metrics to see how effective it is. You will need to decide what is important for you to measure. Some of the most common metrics to monitor include the number of unique visitors, number of page views, and time on a page. Websites that offer subscriptions or memberships also use these numbers as a gauge for knowing how “connected” people are with the site.
