What Makes a Good Website? Your Guide To Websites in 2022

If you are running a business – any kind of business, of any size from a sole trading plumber to a multi-national retailing giant – then you need that business to be online. It does not matter whether you intend to actually conduct business online. You might be entirely focussed on selling in person to people who have visited your bricks and mortar premises you still to be online if you want anyone to ever find you in real life.

A recent study showed that as much as eighty percent of people searching for purveyors of particular products, or suppliers of specific services will only look for those products and services online. Even customers searching for a brick and mortar physical store did not use any other methods to find the businesses they were looking for. The days when potential customers would “let their fingers do the walking” as they flicked through the pages printed business directories or searched advertisements are long gone. If your business does not appear near the top of the search engine results pages then people simply will not find it.

But once people have found your website it needs to be good. It is a cliché to say “you only get one chance to make a first impression”, but that does not mean it is not true. For the vast majority of potential new customers your website is the first interaction they will have with your business. If that interaction is negative the chances that they will make the leap from being “potential customers” to being “actual customers” are slim.

So how do you make that positive first impression? What do you need to make your website good? Perhaps the most obvious consideration when thinking about what makes a good website – particularly in terms of making that good first impression – is what it will look like on screen. It is an obvious point we know, but making sure that your branding is consistent across your business is important.

It really does not make sense to have different logos or font styles for your online and physical presences, it certainly makes no sense to have different logos and fonts on the website itself. A unified, coherent brand is vital so if you have no in house expertise in graphic design it is best to place that work in the hands of specialised professionals. When they engage professionals to work on their web design UK companies consistently report better results in terms of customer engagement with their finished websites.

Is visual appeal the most important thing though? The way your website looks is important, and it is the thing that you customers will notice, but in fact what you really need to think hard about is what you want your site to be able to do and what you want visitors to your site to do while they are there. You can evolve your website over time if you need to but it is better if you get the most crucial points ironed out before the site launches, which means so you ought to make some key decisions up front.

For instance, will you be using your online presence to sell goods and/or services? If so you will need to build in a secure and reliable e-commerce platform. Will you encourage your customers to communicate with your business directly through the website? Will your website offer customers the opportunity to book appointments? All of these functions are things that you should discuss with your web designer, because all of the functions that your site is capable of should be user friendly, intuitive and easy to use.

A good business website should also be designed to guide your customers’ visits, encouraging them to flow through your site in the way that most effectively achieves your desired outcomes. A good home page should lead site users to the parts of the site where you want them to spend their time and attention. Again, this is something you should sit down with a good web designer and discuss – you will find their experience invaluable.

However, just having a website is not enough, however good it is. Many businesses have spent a great deal of time, money and effort building the best looking, most user friendly websites that anyone has ever seen and still not attracted customers because nobody ever actually saw them. That is a terrible wase of an investment which can happen all too easily if the website in question has not been optimised for internet search.

“Search Engine Optimisation”, or “SEO” is the fine and delicate art of ensuring that a website is configured to effectively attract the attention of the algorithms which power the popular search engines.  When they hire our SEO Agency UK businesses know that they are making a positive investment in the future of their company. Optimising a website for online search is a complex task which is too much for most businesses to do in house. Outsourcing to an SEO company like seoBusiness who have time and expertise to ensure that the websites they maintain are real engines of growth.

The secret of a good website lies in good web design. UK businesses invest a great deal of trust and capital in the companies who promise to deliver it. So if we are to answer the question “What makes a good website” what we really need to do is let you know where really great web design is to be found. In all humility, we think that the best web design is to be found here, at seoBusiness, in the heart of Blackburn.

We know that when you think of Web Design Lancashire is not the first place that comes to mind. We are more than familiar with the popular view that the tech industry is firmly located in the South East. But just because something is the “popular view” does not mean it is correct. We are well established in website design, with roots planted deep in the business community of the North West. Our experience in the field is unparalleled because we have been working on website design and SEO for longer than most SEO Agencies have been in business. seoBusiness has been helping businesses of all sizes to thrive online for more than two decades now. We know a thing or two about website design, and we like nothing better than to use our experience to help other businesses grow make the most of their online presence so in fact when it comes to Web Design Lancashire really should be your first port of call.

In the end, the location of a web design company is irrelevant. The whole point of the internet is that it frees us all from the limitations of geography – if your business is online it is, in a very real sense, everywhere.