5 Key Traits To Include In Website Development

A website can be a powerful asset for a business of any size. It can serve as a way to find new clients and customers and communicate with the existing ones. It can also be a hub towards all the other online marketing channels are aimed. And today, a business website is almost a necessary proof of existence for a business.

It's no wonder that website design is taken very seriously today. The very best and most useful websites cost a pretty penny to build; and even though it's not impossible for business owners to build their own websites, there are more ways than one they can mess things up and end up with a substandard website.

And web designers themselves need to be very careful when developing websites. It's easy enough to cover the basics needed to set up a website. In order to develop a truly useful and modern website, however, they will need to implement some key traits that every decent website should possess today.

Mobile-Friendliness

Last year was the year mobile web usage overtook desktop and laptop web usage. For website owners, that means that there are more chances their websites will be accessed from a mobile device than from a desktop device. And while building mobile-only websites is still impractical, having a website that doesn't display well on mobile devices can be damaging.

Responsive design is a web design approach that allows website developers to create websites that display well regardless of the device used to access them. It's not the only way to ensure that a website is mobile-friendly, as there's always the option to build a separate website just for mobile, or to implement dynamic serving which serves different versions of the website depending on the device. Responsive design, however, is the go-to choice for many developers, as it's usually the most cost-effective and easiest to implement.

Ease of Use

It's obvious that a well-performing website should be easy to use. If visitors are having a hard time navigating a website, they might not be able to find the products, services, or information they needed. In fact, website owners shouldn't expect visitors to struggle with their messy websites for long — the Internet is full of competitors who have much more navigable websites.

That's where user experience design, or UX, comes into play. This approach to design is concerned with having a logical navigation structure that's kept shallow so that the user can't get lost navigating too deep into the website. UX also deals with buttons and menu placement, as well as the language used on a website, all to ensure that the users have a good website experience.

Search Optimization

No matter how well-structured a website is, and how well it displays on mobile devices, if no one is able to find the website it's worth next to nothing. Optimizing websites for search engines ensures that they can be found by people who are searching for the things they have to offer.

Search engine optimization is the process of implementing proven best practices that will increase the chance that a website will display on the first page of search engine results for a given set of terms. Getting on the coveted first page of results cannot be achieved overnight, so search engine optimization should be approached as a long-term process.

Quickness

It's no secret that, when it comes to the Internet, people 's attention spans are getting shorter and shorter. If a website fails to live up to its purpose quickly and deliver to the visitors what they came for, they will abandon the website in search for another one that's faster.

Slow website loading times are linked with increased abandonment rates. Around one-half of consumer expects a website to load within only two seconds. To achieve that, website developers need to look at everything from server response time to the size of the elements on a web page. Creating a lean and fast website at the expense of using elements that are too bulky to load quickly is always preferable.

Trendy Design

Finally, a website can't look like it was built 15 years ago and hasn't changed design since. Using obsolete website design techniques under the hood can drastically decrease a website performance, but the aesthetics of a website should also follow the latest trends.

If a business website uses web design that was all the rage ten years ago, not only will it be hard to navigate and display, but it will also look a relic that doesn't speak well about its owners. Having a website means keeping up with the times, and an outdated web design can make a business appear as unwilling to take care of their own online presence.