There are tons of business websites out there, so what separates the best from the rest? You’ll be surprised to see how different some websites can be, making it all the more important that yours is top-notch. What should you do to make this happen? Well, it begins by understanding the three pillars of a successful website:
User Experience
Start with the user experience, as this is the most fundamental aspect to think about. If a website offers a poor user experience, it will never be successful. There are no ifs or buts about this, it’s simply a fact. Consider what defines the success of a website – it tends to be traffic figures, conversions, and sales. All of these rely on users visiting your site and doing different things. As such, if the user experience is excellent, they’re more likely to hang around and fill in a form or buy something.
Conversely, a bad user experience makes them leave straight away. They hate how awkward your site is, and they can’t wait to leave. For reference, when talking about user experience, we’re talking about things like:
- Page loading speeds
- Menu navigation
- Content
- Functionality
- Responsive web design
The list goes on, but you can see why this is such a crucial thing to worry about!
Maintenance
Secondly, an excellent website is easy to maintain and edit. You should be able to make changes as and when you please, with no problems at all. If you set up and run the site yourself, using a platform like WordPress makes sense as it provides plenty of maintenance tools. From here, you can edit content, change things around, and keep your site fresh.
The alternative is to use a web design company to set up and maintain your site. This costs more money, but it ensures that web experts are monitoring your website at all times. Either way, a poorly maintained site is terrible as it can be out of date, buggy, and impact the user experience.
Security
Last but not least, you have web security. Every website needs to have an encrypted connection that makes it safe. If yours doesn’t have this, it will instantly go down in some people’s estimations. In fact, some web browsers will warn users before they click on your site. Google Chrome will have a warning page saying this website isn’t safe, go back. You don’t need to be an expert to understand how this can impact your success!
Similarly, your site must protect people’s data and prevent it from getting stolen. Again, this largely relates to having a secure/encrypted connection. If user data is compromised on your site, it could be the end of your business. Your reputation will be ruined, and people will find it hard to trust your site ever again.
Naturally, you have loads of other aspects of your site to think about. The actual web design and layout are big things, though they fall under the user experience heading. Ultimately, if you want a successful website, you have to nail these three pillars.
