What Makes a Great Website: 12 Critical Elements

1. 1. Providing Basic Information – A quick overview of what your business/company is about or provides. What problem do you solve for your customer?
  2. Testimonials – Social proof is the 2nd most important aspect of a website next to providing what you do. People want to read reviews and want that extra confirmation from others that they are making the right decision.
  3. Brand Presence – Clean/modern logo and website design. Nothing turns away someone more than an outdated looking website. If you don’t care about your own assets and appearance then why would a customer think that you care about theirs?
  4. Contact Details – Make sure they are consistent throughout your site and on all other platforms. You should have a static footer with contact details globally on your site. This is where visitors will look first.
  5. Security – Not only do you want to protect your website but you should also protect your customer’s information while using your site as well. Having an SSL certificate in place makes your users more comfortable sending information on your site. It’s also highly merited by search engines and rankings.
  6. Social Media – Link to all your social platforms and keep them up to date and fresh with content. Make sure to link your social media platforms back to your website. Sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn have very high page authority that search engines love.
  7. SEO – Always using best on-page SEO practices will put you steps ahead of your competition right out of the gate.
  8. Blog – Giving fresh content to your customers helps keep them coming back to your site and the search engines love to feed on fresh new content so this also boosts your SEO efforts significantly.
  9. Responsiveness – Making your site mobile friendly is definitely in the top most important things for making a website great. Speaking of search engines, Google will actually take into account your mobile responsiveness first over desktop/computer version. This is because the weight has shifted to over 50% of users browsing via mobile devices vs desktops and laptops.
  10. Strong Call To Action – This should be “above the fold” on your site (user shouldn’t have to scroll) to see what you want the visitor to do. Whether it’s calling you, fill out a form, schedule an appointment, whatever.
  11. Page Speed – A fast loading page is very important, not only to a visitor or potential customer to reduce friction and frustration, but having a fast website is also praised by search engines as well.
  12. Value Proposition – This should be the 3rd most important section of your site next to your Call to action and Testimonials. Who you are, who you help, what you do, and what sets you apart from your competition.