Websites: Is your website valuable and important for your business?

Web Design & Development

Websites: Is your website valuable and important for your business?

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Read Time: 5 minutes

Websites have become essential components for running businesses, and every day, thousands of new websites are launched on the internet… easily over 5,47,000 new websites per day.

With the ever-increasing number of players online, and the increasing number of services catering to multiple problems, many of these websites will fail.

Obviously, a large portion of why websites fail is because the businesses behind them fail to innovate, and grow/shift in the right directions.

Or have no “righteous” direction at all (when we say not “righteous”, we mean to shed light on the multitude of businesses that are either started to solve problems that are already being solved by other players, or are based on conservative principles, and ideas of the past focused solely on making more money!).

But not astonishingly, what also massively affects the future of a modern day business is its website’s performance, both in terms of functionality, and appeal. Let us try to understand the features that makes a website good…

Website Development Best Practices 

Website Page Loading Speed

Website page loading speed
Website page loading speed

We chose to begin with speed, as it has to do with the reason we chose to write on this topic.

We recently started digital campaigns for a new client who have a very interesting, unique problem that they’re trying to solve with their venture. They already had a working e-commerce website when they reached out to us.

The reason they had come to us was that although having spent time, money, and effort in digital marketing across several platforms, they had gotten no conversions. Not one!

When we began their campaigns over Facebook (and Instagram), and Google Display Network combined (for maximum reach), we found out that our team had generated pretty good impressions in the first few days. But somehow, the Drop-off Rates were sky-high!

The analysis that followed showed us that the landing-page load time was about 14 seconds. Fourteen seconds?! That’s like fourteen years in page speed times!

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The current average attention span of an adult human is three seconds. And it is ever-receding! A survey carried out by Amazon stated that for each second of added load time, they lost 1% of revenue. Speed is THAT important! So, your pages better load quick.

PageSpeed Insights
PageSpeed Insights

There are a lot of free tools for website speed testing, like Google’s PageSpeed Insights, it will not only rate your web page for speed, it will also give you feedback regarding what you need to fix.

Website Responsiveness

Responsive website design
Responsive website design

How does your website respond to different devices? Does the layout fall apart? Does it get stretched? Do you have to zoom-in, and out again, and again? Responsive Web design is the approach that suggests that the website should mould itself on the basis of the screen size, the platform, and the orientation.

Every time a user opens your website that doesn’t “mould” itself as per the screen size, the website is usually (always) too difficult to be handled by their fingers. And, maybe it can be zoomed in by the user to make it function, but we trust in people to be lazy.

People hate extra efforts! And in their defence, why should they waste their efforts on your website when you did not even think about their convenience?

Mobile-Friendliness

Website Mobile-Friendliness
Website Mobile-Friendliness

But doesn’t that come under Responsiveness? Not necessarily. Sure, Responsiveness is one aspect that helps a website become Mobile-Friendly, but apart from that, the touch response, the accessibility of the buttons, the ease of navigation, and the layout are ingredients that go into the mobile-friendliness pot.

So, this includes elements of both UI and UX. Is your website Mobile-Friendly? Use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test to find out.

Webpage Layout

Website and Webpage Layouts
Website and Webpage Layouts

Now, we did mention layout under Mobile-Friendliness, but we feel that this aspect too deserves its own space. A website on a mobile device cannot be the same resized bunch of webpages created to suit a computer-screen. The layout has to be bespoke (or at least made to measure).

The respective positions of the navigation bar when opened on different devices is essential. Also, people have become super used to certain features over the years (like clicking/touching the Brand Logo to go back to the Homepage).

So used to these features that they instinctively expect them to just be there, so make sure you do not go against those established norms. Design your websites for Universal Access.

If your website is made for e-commerce, the manner in which your products are displayed, and grouped will be essential for a good layout. The website of the client we mentioned previously suffered massively in this arena. Their business is like a marketplace (a bit like Amazon) that focuses on particular class of products.

However, (unlike Amazon), the products were not categorized in sub-groups. So when a viewer clicks on one of our Ads to land on their site (that is, if he has the patience to stay that long), he is completely overwhelmed by the barrage of unrelated items right there…

Pages and pages of individual items that are scattered in no particular order! Always remember that people do not like guessing games online, so you need to make things really simple-stupid for them to be comfortable, or you need to tell them exactly what you want them to do (CTAs – Calls to Action).

Language and Localisation

Website Language and Localisation
Website Language and Localisation

Trust in auto-translate to fail you. Always. Get a professional who can help you with your translations. And seriously guys, your viewers in Okinawa, Japan cannot relate to your Pulp Fiction references! (No disrespect to Sam Jackson!) So, translation is not enough. Cultural awareness in your translations is very important.

Also, in case you run an e-commerce store, your customers do not want to waste their time calculating what the costs would be as per their regional currency. So try to make it as convenient, and comfortable for them.

The Content and Visuals on the website

All the stories that you’ve been told, and will be told, will fade…some have already faded. The names of the characters, the protagonists, the murderers, and the victims, their words too shall be forgotten.

All that you will keep will be the feelings that came along, and became mood.

Every business has a story to tell, even when it does not. And, everything you say on your website is a component of your story. So, when you say your “Mission” is to become the “No. 1 brand in the market”, your customers know that your first priority is outshining your competition by any means, (and not their service).

And then when you say that your products are the best in their class, you do not have any proof to substantiate that claim, and your customers know that the statement is just some BS used to fill up space! And then, your words do not have legitimacy.

And sure, the exact words will be forgotten, but the feeling that your business lacks credibility will be remembered.(Uncomfortable silences. Why do we feel it’s necessary to yak about BS in order to be comfortable?)

The visuals your website shows, and all the words you use to tell your story need to make the viewer feel your story. It is now well understood that different colours have different effects on people’s emotions, and moods, so make sure you use colour combinations that do not make them feel threatened or on the edge.

Use combinations that make the viewers feel at home, and encourage trust. Try to minimise too, at the most, three colours (different shades of those colours may be used). Ensure that if your webpages have images, the colours go well with them.

Lastly, we know that there are a lot of website templates available these days, some of which will effectively solve most of your problems (at least for the time being), those templates though are not suitable for all kinds of business goals that websites can achieve.

Perhaps there will be a day when websites made using these templates will be good for all purposes, and even people with no knowledge about technology will be able to handle creating their own websites, but that will take some time.

So, depending on your website goals, it is recommended that you invest in a good professional website development. These professionals have dedicated their entire lives to learning the art of web-development, and most of the times, even specializing in particular fields or types of web-development.

So yes Bartholomew, we know you’re quite proud about the things you learnt from that free webinar on websites, but unfortunately, the knowledge you possess is only enough to attract attention at cocktail parties, and not for the actual practice. We think it always pays to invest into (credible) professional website development.

What would you like to change about your website after having read this? Are you facing issues developing your website? Would you like our team to help you with your website development?

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