Have you ever asked yourself what the reason might be that keeps you staying on a certain website? Why are there some websites you leave immediately without batting an eye and others you are stuck on for some reason? And how did you find the website in the first place? While creating or developing a site there are numerous things to take into account to provide a great user experience in the end.
In this article we'll highlight some key factors you should focus on and pay attention to when developing or launching a great WordPress website. In addition, we'll intersperse some basics and useful tips on how to improve your website SEO in order to rank better in search engines and thus reach more visitors who might not have noticed your content otherwise.
- High-quality and valuable content
- Appealing and clutter-free design
- Solid website structure
- Compatibility with major browsers
- SEO friendly and optimized
- Social media interactivity
- Reliable hosting provider
High-quality and valuable content
Content quality is certainly the most important aspect of running a website, especially when it comes to editorial WordPress websites like online magazines and dynamic news websites or newspapers. Either by chance or on purpose, your website visitors come to your website to browse through and read your articles. If your content provides some valuable information for your readers, they'll likely come back. That means, providing high-quality and valuable content is quite important and significant if you'd like them to come back - and who wouldn't want that?!
In addition, your content should be well-organized in terms of categories, topics, etc. That way your website visitors can easily browse through your articles and eventually locate exactly what they've been looking for. How important quality content in fact is, became obvious when Google rolled out its famous algorithm updates. Then at the latest every webmaster and website owner realized, that content has become one of the most crucial components for good SEO.
Appealing and clutter-free design
Apart from high-quality content, the appearance and design of a website is another important aspect of a successful online presence. When visitors stumble upon your website, the design is the first thing they'll see. Your website should therefore make a friendly, interesting or professional first impression - according to the type of website you are running and it should suit your brand / label.
Having a design that can provide visual support to the look and feel of your brand / label is thus essential for a great website. In case you are running a WordPress website or plan on launching one, then you can choose from plenty of WordPress themes which come with certain designs and can be customized to a certain degree if even needed.
Solid website structure
Before heading towards the construction of your website, it is important that you analyze all the requirements you need - including the (position of) menus, sub-menus, page length, responsive layout, etc. That way you can lay the cornerstone of a well-structured website. Your website visitors will benefit from your well-organized and thought-out website structure as they can navigate intuitively. If you're starting from scratch or use pre-structured templates is up to you and your skills.
Compatibility with major browsers
Source: isromar / Pixabay.com
In general, people use different browsers when they visit websites, do online shopping or read their favorite blog. The major browsers include Safari, Chrome, Internet Explorer (Edge), Firefox, etc. It is very important that your website displays your content appropriately in each of these major browsers. Fortunately, with certain programming and web techniques you can optimize your website for all of these major browsers at once and display your original content in an optimal way.
SEO friendly and optimized
Once your website development and configuration has been completed, it's time to think about reaching as many visitors as possible with your website. However, if your website doesn't appear within the search results it ought to be, then no one will visit your site. In that case it also simply doesn’t matter how awesome your website may look like and how unique your content might be.
That's why your website should not only provide relevant, unique and high-quality content as well as an attractive website design, but it also needs to be recognizable to major search engines. Especially Google as the most used search engine. To optimize your website for search engines, there are several key factors. Listing all of them here would go beyond the scope of this article, so we'll just mention a few buzz words: meta description, keywords, headlines, HTML markup or permalinks.
Social media interactivity
To reach out to even more visitors, social media is the perfect solution. Connecting with potential website visitors by spreading your content on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest or YouTube helps you to expand your reach. It further helps to boost SEO or improve your business' footprint on the web while building up a strong group of followers on various social platforms. This is why it's important to make use of share buttons and integrate social media feeds on your website as well.
Reliable hosting provider
Source: ColossusCloud / Pixabay.com
Last but not the least, your website should be up and running 24*7 without reflecting any latency or in worst case even downtime. A slow website makes user experience frustrating and forces visitors to leave your page right away. In addition, page loading speed is one of the significant parameters for good rankings in search engines. Keeping that in mind, you should get your website backed with reliable hosting so customers won't get stuck or frustrated with a website that doesn't perform well.
Wrapping it up: Key factors that make your website stand apart
While developing, re-designing or re-structuring your WordPress website, keep the above outlined key aspects in mind. Following these suggestions will contribute to a successful website. Whether you are developing a website from scratch, re-defining some deficient aspects of a currently running website or customizing a pre-defined WordPress theme, when focusing on quality you will surely see a noteworthy difference on the long run regarding visitors or website revenue.
image sources
- Web Browser Logos: isromar / Pixabay.com
- Hosting Server: ColossusCloud / Pixabay.com