Did you know there are over 1.7 billion websites on the internet?
That’s a frickin tonne of sites!
A few of them are amazing, most are average, many poorly designed and some are just damn right terrible…
You know a bad site as soon as you click on it.
How many times have you clicked on a site and clicked straight back off again? This means the site is probably designed badly.
Whether you’re greeted by a wall of text, horrible colours that don’t compliment each other or hard to use navigation, you’ll always know a bad site when you see one.
So what actually makes a site terrible? Or rather, what does a site need to be amazing?
In this post, we’re going to find out what every successful website should include….
Table of Contents
Why Is a Great Website Important?
If you’re creating a website, you want people to actually use it right?
A badly designed site and hard to use navigation is a sure-fire way to having a site no one wants to use.
You want people to come to your site and think wow! This looks amazing!
Then, you want them to navigate easily, contact you directly or best of all… buy from you in a simple, straightforward way.
For these reasons, it’s absolutely crucial to include the following practices on your site…
5 Essential Parts of a Website
Clear Message
Your website needs to have a clear purpose and message.
What do you want people to know when they come to your site?
As soon a someone clicks onto your website, your message should be immediately clear.
What service are you offering? What are you selling? How can you help people?
These questions should all be answered within 2-3 short sentences and placed at the top of your site’s homepage.
Your overall message is known as your mission statement and every great site should have one. This is also why your copy is crucial to your website.
Easy Navigation
Perhaps the biggest mistake with amateur web design is not having clear, easy to use navigation.
Great navigation is usually achieved via a header.
This header displays a menu that links to the most important pages on your site.
For example, a typical header menu would look something like this;
Home | Services | About | Contact
This makes it super easy for people to get where they want to go on your site.
If you want to go a step further and make it even simpler, you can make your header ‘sticky’ so that it stays at the top of the page even when a user scrolls down one of your pages.
Hierarchical Design
One of the fundamentals in web design is hierarchy.
This is the ordering of elements on a page in terms of importance.
For example, you might have your mission statement at the top in clear, bold typography followed by some more information directly below in smaller, thinner type.
Underneath that, you could then have a Call to Action Button.
This way of designing makes things nice and easy to read for users and is great for directing attention to specific parts of the page.
Call To Action
Having a clear Call to Action (CTA) is crucial for your site and its purpose.
You want people to come to your site and do something!
This could be; Call you to book an appointment, direct them to your store or sign up for your newsletter…
Whatever it is, you need to make it as easy as possible for people to do so.
Having a CTA button across your site allows people to do exactly what you want them to.
Contact Details
Your contact details are also super important for your site overall and should be visible on each page.
This is usually done in the form of a footer that sits at the bottom of each page.
You should include your email, phone number, address and social media accounts.
Having this means users will have a few different options that they can contact you with.
Some people might want to call you, some email and some just want to send a message, so by having all means of communication covered, you’re catering for all your users.
Bonus Website Tips
Simplicity
Your website’s design should be simple.
It’s very easy to get excited when creating your site and add a tonne of different elements and features.
However, less really is more when it comes to great web design. Don’t be afraid to add spaces between different sections and never cram lots of elements into one area!
Your whole goal is to make things easy…
There’s an awesome book called ‘Don’t Make Me Think’ if you want to find out more about designing web pages.
Great Copy
Having really great writing skills is going to be a massive asset when designing a site.
Being able to write amazing web page copy in a compelling way that can persuade people to take an action is invaluable in 2021.
So whether you’re hiring a copywriter or writing yourself, your copy needs to be nothing less than amazing.
Unique Images
Something that sets you apart from an average run of the mill website is having high-quality, unique images across your site.
Not only is this great for your users, but is also an important SEO ranking factor, another aspect you need to consider when building a site.
What Should a Website Include - Summarised
So there we have it.
Now you know what every website should include.
As we know, there are 1.7 billion websites and a large portion of these would have no idea about the topics we have discussed in this post.
By implementing these 5 essentials you’re already going to be separating yourself from the majority and beating most of your competitors.
