What Makes a "Good" Web Site?

A good web site is one that:

• Meets the needs of the target visitor
• Is credible
• Meets your objectives

To meet the needs of your target visitor, your web site should:

1. Load quickly
2. Be compatible and work well with the lowest-common-denominator browser and operating system being used by your target visitor. This can vary widely depending upon who your target is (for example, computerless WebTV browsers vs. high-tech geek types).
3. Be easy to navigate. The visitor should be able to find what they want in 3 clicks or less.

Studies show that to be credible, your web site should:

1. Present a professional appearance
   • Clean, easy-to-read text
   • Good color balance
   • Clear, good-quality graphics
   • Good fit in browser windows
   • Its own domain name
   • Ad-free hosting
   • Good design and layout
2. Function Properly
   • Free of JavaScript errors and other programming errors
   • Free of broken links and missing images
3. Provide information clearly, concisely, and coherently
   • Good grammar and spelling
   • Good focus and organization
   • Useful information
     • Product and/or Service information
     • Contact information
     • Policies (Shipping, Support, Guarantees, Privacy Policy)
4. Have some degree of recognition or referral. Visitors are more likely to become customers if they recognize your name from advertisements, word of mouth, reviews, or testimonials.

What to avoid:

Below are things to avoid in a business web site. All of these will make your site appear amateurish to most visitors and will detract from your credibility and professional reputation.

• Animated GIF graphics and bright blinking text, unless they have a specific purpose such as in a game
• Looping music/MIDI's/sound effects/etc. which cannot be turned on and off by the visitor.
• Flash®-only web sites with no alternative content provided for non-equipped browsers
• Java applets with no alternative content provided for non-equipped browsers
• Busy backgrounds
• Images with large file sizes or too many images on one page. These slow page loading to a crawl. Ideal is to keep the total size of the page to about 50-60K or less, including the page file itself (HTML etc.) and all the page's images and dependent files (JavaScript etc.). As an example, this page's total components add up to 51K.
• Bloated code which makes your web pages take forever to load (Sorry Billy G., but all Microsoft web-page-creation products tend to do this).
• Exclamation points!!!! Don't annoy! your visitors with sensationalism!!!!!!!!!!
• Text too similar in color to background
• Text too small or too large
• "Courier" and other difficult-to-read fonts that don't scale well across browsers
• Long pages requiring long loading times and excessive scrolling
• Pop-ups unless used very sparingly and for a specific purpose
• Excessive frames - don't make people scroll in multiple places on one page just to see different parts of your page. Frames not only hurt your credibility, they will also hurt you in the search engines. In fact there are so many "cons" and so few "pros" for frames, we advise our clients against them entirely.
• Entry pages with no navigational purpose other than to access the web site. Don't make people click more than they need to.