What makes a good business website?

[www.sitepal.co.uk]

What makes a good business website?

Your thoughts, please

Thanks

Tony

[DuaneJackson]

Hi Tony,

It's a bit of a vague question - define 'good'.

[www.sitepal.co.uk]

Hi Tony,

It's a bit of a vague question - define 'good'.

The question i am asking is what looks good to your web designer who tells you it's the best or is it

You can't really put a site live and say to your customers do you like the look of the site can you

[DuaneJackson]

You can't really put a site live and say to your customers do you like the look of the site can you

I guess not, but you can post the link here and ask for savage reviews : )

[welshnoonoo]

Hi Tony -

You are a 'customer' too, whether you are looking for a commercial product/service or as a consumer. Take a look at the sites of companies that you may deal with and write a list of the things that you like about them, and a list of things that you don't. Also take a look at your competitior's sites and do the same.

When you go to your designer take this list, and a list of sites that you like and give them to them.

Go to a web designer who has a graphic designer on board (in house or out sourced) as well as a web developer as they are not the same thing!

Ensure your web developer has a grasp of search engine friendly website development.

If your budget allows (or if you are a professional copywriter), ensure the copy is written professionally by a copywriter who has an understanding of writing for the web as we digest information differently on screen than in print.

I have more info on my website if it is of interest, there are a number of articles that may or may not help: www.crystalclearonline.co.uk.

Also, check out your local business link or whoever you have in your locality, as they put on talks for small businesses. I do one over here in Chester for the Chester Enterprise Agency and I get really good feedback from people as it gives them an insite before they spend out their hard earned cash!

Hope that helps!

[WomenXtra]

I would say make sure it meets the accessability and usability guidelines. the rest is based on what you feel look good and matches with the brand of your business...

I also think a good website should have a good business strategy - you need to know where do you want your customer to go from each page on the site. if you are selling something, you need to make sure you have the right links placed in the right places. Some links are trigger ones and others are directional ones to go to the right place. either way, make every step short and simple.

finally - make sure before you design your website, an SEO talks to the designer.. using tables and sliced images is no good. you need a lot of CSS and less html tables. you need a lot of <h1> and <h2> titles. You need links coming from other places other than your menu. so your SEO will pass on the right message to ur designer and hopefully the end result will save you a lot of money.

Good luck
T

[kartel]

Personally i believe that everyone's view is different as i might like a site and someone else would rip it apart. as a Web designer i try and keep it clean and fresh. and not too much info as most people hate alot of reading. easy navigation is important too as your customers might not be PC Pro. look at other site's that sell the same product as yourself and get some idea's of what direction you want to go with.

[welshnoonoo]

not too much info as most people hate alot of reading.

Now herein lies a problem, because an SEO Consultant will tell you that you need to have plenty of words on a page in order to be successful at marketing via search engines.

I don't think it is necessarily the amount of words on the page that causes people a problem, I think it is the way it is laid out, and lack of sub headings etc. We do not "read" on screen, we scan and recognise. In fact i bet most of us will print off a document if we do need to read it.

Ah well, that's my SEO soap box over with! Sorry! :lol:

[creospace]

A lot of this relies of a hefty budget and is ideal world stuff.

Most don't have such a hefty budget or their perception of what a website costs is somewhat distorted and so when the ££££ appear they run or want to skip stuff to save money.

I don't have an external designer, although if a budget allowed then I would and in my ideal world I want to every time. I do have an external copywriter who is great and I fully appreciate the need of her. I have enough SEO knowledge and does the copywriter to give the site a great start but we don't profess to be experts. I have enough knowledge and understanding of accessibility requirements to put that in place and all sites are coded to w3c xhtml validation.

With that in mind I can offer a broad product for business but does that make it a good business website? If the client is happy and his/her clients are happy then what else can be said?

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and we all have different tastes, when it comes to websites we have to look objectively and consider things like functionality, usability, content, message not just they eye candy!

Gary

[Coding Monkey]

Now herein lies a problem, because an SEO Consultant will tell you that you need to have plenty of words on a page in order to be successful at marketing via search engines.


I certainly wouldn't. It's the quality of words, not the amount of them. 2 paragraphs is plenty.

[welshnoonoo]

certainly wouldn't. It's the quality of words, not the amount of them. 2 paragraphs is plenty.

Ah then we are from different SEO schools. :lol:

[BlackBerryUK]

The keyword quanity does make a big difference.. why some websites show higher in the listing then? ;)

by the way i know it isn't the ONLY reason.. but one of many!

[Coding Monkey]

Nasa.gov. 3 instances of the word "NASA" in the entire code. Less than 20 words on the home page. Top out of 199 million results. We can go on with more and more examples and so forth of why they're top via linking and this and that. The keyword density will make a difference, but you don't need to have lots of words to SEO. You also need to appeal to your target audience more than the search engines, as what's the use them appearing and not buying anything?

[welshnoonoo]

I don't think that this thread is the right place to discuss this, so I am bowing out suffice to say, your example is of an authority website and so not an even playing field, and as with many things - opinions vary, a successful website needs a number of elements as I think we all agree, SEO is just one of them, and even then, only if Tony is wanting to use his site to market via search engines, which of course, he may not.

So probably best not to bog this particular thread down with clashes of SEO viewpoints! :wink:

[creospace]

My copywriter gets hacked off working with SEO people , becasue they sometimes want to stuff the pages full of un needed text for the sake of prooving ones SEO worth.

A website is for a human eye to read at the end of the day.

I guess it would seem mac, me and my copywriter all went to the same school :)

[BlackBerryUK]

Thats True Creospace - but at the same time, there is no point spending £££ on a website no one will see..and guess what! you spend money on the design and then bz no one can see it in search you end up spending more in PPC and banners and other forms of advertising.

Our website doesnt have a lot of content either.. but we managed to show more in search once we started to add more content and more keywords...

apologies for going off topic here..but it;s a very exciting area to get into ;)

I would recommend looking into what's your competition doing and start doing it better! make sure your site reviews are good in other places.. so really make sure your customer services 150% excellent!

I always check business reviews from the public and i did turn away from certain websites when i saw many people complaining about the service.

[Tin]

Mac wrote:
It's the quality of words, not the amount of them. 2 paragraphs is plenty.
Does seem to conflict slightly with those that maintain it's important to have
content, content, content... :wink:

[SillyJokes]

What makes a good business website?

Keep it simple, fill it with content.

ease of use to include the fact that it is obvious what service you offer and how it benefits me within three seconds

It wants to be presentable without too many bells and whistles.

Of course, what you sell Tony is bells and whistles, so you need reduce all others to keep the overall 'noise' down.

And it needs to answer absolutely every question anybody could ever think of about your product and what it is, why they would use it, how it is made.

Then good contact details.

Put a bit about you in the site since people buy from people, even online.

In your particular case you may have to think hard about how much of your content is verbal from your talking people and how much is presented in easy to scan, professionaly written copy.

My initial suspicion is that you could 'over do' the examples of talking people and actually put people off buying because having to wait for someone to tell you everything in their script is frustratingly slow (imagine how you feel when you get a sales call from a call centre).

But you will be able to play with this balance to achieve best results.

SEO will be important, but all the SEO in the world is going to be for nothing if you can't convert them once they arrive.

Keep it simple, fill it with content.

[multilingual]

The point here is that it is a B2B website, which means that you have to market it slightly differently to one which targets pure consumers.

Generally, a business person will spend more time on your site and will want to feel confident before contacting you. Just having a couple of short paragraphs may not be enough to convince someone. Case studies and examples of work are always good trust builders to include.

You need to show the reader that you can be trusted with his money and that what you provide is value.

This is somewhat different to a B2C site which can be more gimicky with 'half price sales' and 'free trial' campaigns. These sort of offers don't get the same response rates for B2B because the business user wants value, and it is important to remember that price is only one of five ingredients that make up our understanding of value.

The full five are:

Can it be delivered on time? (Guaranteed next day delivery)
Will the quality be good enough? (show case studies and testimonials)
How easy will they be to work with? (Be courteous and professional)
How easy are their payment methods? (offer lots of payment options)
How much will it cost? (be reasonable and don't run too cheap)

If you can't deliver on the first four then no one will want your product even if it is very cheap. If you get the top four right then price might not even come into it.

A consumer, on the other hand, states the price as being the no. 1 concern and may well wait for the products, put up with bad service, etc if they think they are getting a bargain.

Just a few things to bear in mind.

JB

[Tin]

Some good common sense thoughts! Good post JB :)

[Mark Flanighan]

Hi,
Different types of businesses tend to need different types of websites.

I.E is it an entertainment type site, that requires lots of stimulation, graphics etc.
Or An information site, that requires quick navigation and quality content.
Or a portal, where your objective is to get someone from A to B as quick as possible.

Look at your competition and discover who have succesful sites.
This should give you an idea of the success formula.

You may find out, how you set your site up is critical to its success.
Or you may also find out that how you market your site is more important than how it looks.

Take Google and Yahoo for example.
If you had arrived from planet Mars and looked at both home pages and were asked to choose which is the most successful.
A yahoo page full of content or a Google page with a single search box.
Chances are you would choose Yahoo and be wrong.

Identify the Google of your genre and it will give you a good recipe for success.

Mark