#goodwebsite

It’s 2020, and website design has come leaps and bounds since the year 2000. Long gone are static pages with lengthy sidebars and long above-the-fold banner ads. These days, we see designs that use parallax scrolling effects, streamlined top-down design, and top bar menus. Watch the complete video.

By Ryan Shawgo Posted November 13, 2017 from Atilus When it comes to building a website, it seems like almost anyone can make their own these days with online website building tools like WIX. But what some people don’t understand is that not only having an attractive website is a must, but how your website functions and works as a tool for your business is what really matters. Here are some of the most important factors that will make your website do what it is supposed to do, Grow Your Business Online.

Content – The content is the meat of your website. People come to your website looking for an answer to something. Make it as easy as possible for users to find that information. Well written content will keep your user engaged on your website as well as helping organic traffic find that content in search results.

Design – The design of your website should not only look attractive, but also function in a way that represents your Goals of the site. What do you want people to do on your site? Create a design that lends to that end user goal, and make it as easy as possible to navigate through your website to reach that goal.

Functionality – The site should function smoothly, or will cause frustration from your end user and cause them to leave your website. Things to consider are load time of you website and making sure links aren’t broken or missing pages.

Usability – This goes back to the design. If you do not create a good User Experience for your website, people will get frustrated and leave. Having a good user flow will keep your viewers engaged in your content and lead them to your end Goal in mind. Having a responsive design will help increase a good user experience and is a must now-a-days considering everyone is using a smart phone to shop or browse the web.

Optimization – If your site is well optimized it will help increase your chances of a user converting or coming back to your website. Things to consider optimizing would be images. Keeping your images optimized for web will increase overall speed of your website and making it easy for a user to navigate through the content without getting frustrated.

What Does A Website Co$t?

When I first think of what websites to compare as good constructed websites and badly constructed websites, I instantly go to magazine websites and editorial television networks. These are common areas of the internet that I reach for when I am looking for inspiration, fashion trends, and news reports. 

Good Website:

NYLON Magazine

As soon as you type in www.nylonmag.com, you are looking at a unique gallery of enlarged interesting pictures of trending people, music, news, and fashion. The pictures move left every few seconds and it intrigues me to read and look at every picture. As you scroll down, the navigation bar stays at the top and the trending news of the day are split into a four column design with a picture and headline that follows under that picture. The bold black typeface matched with the highlight of yellow when you click on a tab really pops with the white background. The pink of the NYLON label at the top is very refreshing and modern.

When one enters this site, they are getting exactly what they want as soon as they push the enter button. The latest and greatest topics are enlarged and made the focus of the website as soon as you enter. Scrolling down, the hierarchy of popular news is placed accordingly. As far as the navigation bar at the top goes, it is so easy to navigate and find specifically what one is looking for in this website. 

Bad Website:

BuzzFeed

One website I often find myself on is a place called BuzzFeed.com. As addicting as the titles of the photo galleries of embarrassing celebrity photos can be, I cannot stand going on this website. For one, the website has an abundance of crappy ads in the corner, and if you don't dodge them quick enough, you end up on a spam website. When I click on a BuzzFeed link from Facebook that seems pretty funny that I can't pass up, I usually am waiting three minutes for the page to load. When it does eventually load, it's always tricky to know what arrows to click on to get to the next picture of the gallery. Usually there is two or three arrows on the page, and all but one refers to a spam website. If you click on the wrong arrow, you're then redirected to ANOTHER spam website!