What makes a good website?

Years ago, it was the entry in the telephone directory, the attractively designed poster or the flyer distributed in the mail that established the initial contact between the company and potential customers. a professional website essential. Companies have long been aware of the importance of their digital presence, which not only significantly determines their external perception, but - against the backdrop of the great competition that is fought out in Google search results - can represent the decisive success factor. Nevertheless, many web presences fail to score points both technically, visually and structurally and thus to convince the target group of a company's services - low dwell times, high bounce rates and few returning visitors are the result.

But how can a website be structured and designed so that the business model presented with the core message described is optimally conveyed and the visitor's interest is aroused from the very first moment? So that you can better assess the potential of your marketing measures in the future and also derive any need for action for yourself, we have provided you below with the most important criteria for a professional, good website compiled.   

Regardless of whether the Web presence of a company If a website is to be created from scratch or if a relaunch is planned in the course of successful optimization, it is important to deal with central questions of conception at the beginning of a website project. After all, only when the clearly defined goals to be pursued Once the website has been created, the relevant content, the appropriate design and all the necessary functions for a successful online presence can be selected or compiled during further web development. The goals that are to be realized with the help of a website can differ significantly depending on the company and industry: For example, online stores should sell as many products as possible, blog articles should provide information on specific topics, or customer contact should be established using the integrated web form.

In addition to setting a specific direction for the website creation, these precise targets are also of great importance to ensure the success of a website and thus the ROI (Return on investment) to make them measurable. The target definition can have an operational focus on the one hand, but also a strategic focus on the other, as the following overview shows:

In addition to the goals to be realized with a professional website, the planning and design must always include a Orientation to the target group The customer is the one who has to be met. It is important to empathize with them, to understand possible questions, problems and concerns in order to meet their expectations when they visit the website, to provide relevant content and to create trust. To do this, the potential customers must be known or defined as well as possible, which is often done according to common criteria:

About the Enter the URL - Uniform Resource Locator - in the address bar of the browser, potential customers can access a website online in a direct way. The Internet address describes the unique path to a specific file on a server and is basically structured as follows:

An important component of URLs and thus also a success factor of websites is the domain name - in this case lead-anker. As a first impression of the company behind it, it makes sense to point to memorable keywords that best describe the offer or the content of the page or refer to the brand name. In addition, when selecting a domain, it is important to ensure that no complicated terms, numbers, special characters or umlauts are used and that a maximum length of 20 characters is not exceeded - this is the only way for potential customers to easily find the desired company homepage!

If a website is called up that takes far too long to load and has to be watched slowly being set up, disappointed visitors usually jump off quickly and find the information they need or the product they want at a competitor's site. Particularly in the case of mobile surfing, where the speed of data transfer also depends to a large extent on the mobile network, it is necessary to good websites therefore via a short charging time dispose

This means that all content is displayed within the shortest possible time - ideally within maximum two seconds - should be fully displayed and ready for interaction. But a fast-loading website is not only relevant in terms of making a good impression on users, it can also have a positive impact on search engine rankings.

Online store with purchase options, interactive forums, blogs or plain web presence of a company - anyone who operates a website on the Internet has to deal with a variety of legal regulations otherwise there is a risk of costly warnings. A website almost always requires a Imprint, whereby the compulsory levies in the Telemedia Act and include, among other things, the name, address or contact details of the site operator.

Since data protection also plays an important role, it is essential that the specifications from the DSVGO (European Data Protection Regulation) must be complied with. This includes a privacy policy for the collection and processing of personal data, as well as the integration of a cookie banner, if applicable.

The content of good websites offers the visitor a real added valueThe content is a convincing way of highlighting the services on offer and getting to the heart of the matter. In order to drive the right content strategy and offer variety instead of boredom for the most different purposes - whether industrial company with focus on special productions or talented wedding photographer - it is important to combine the right formats. In addition to a high resolution and the appropriate production quality of images and videos, a number of things should be taken into account, especially when creating good texts.

In order to be quickly grasped by visitors, it is important to provide text passages with a high information content and to create a clear structure with the help of paragraphs, concise headings or bullet points. Error-free grammar and spelling are a matter of course and underline the seriousness and credibility of a company.

Whether it's signing up for a newsletter, leaving a comment or buying a product on offer - according to the goals set for a website, potential customers must be prompted to take certain actions. Thus, a good website not only navigates to relevant information, but also offers, above all with the help of "Call-to-action" buttons, many opportunities for interaction and communication:

Pictures of employees who have long since left the company, an outdated product range or incorrect address details - if the information on a website is not up to date, visitors are guaranteed to leave it quickly and will not be encouraged to return. For this reason, good websites are characterized by the Actuality of all contentsThe blog should contain information about the company, in particular about the listed employees, contact options and the scope of services with offered products or services. Likewise, in a created blog should be Regular contributions published and all links be checked on the website with regard to functionality.