3 Keys of a great website

In the last post we shared with you what we believe are the 5 things to avoid on your website and hopefully you've knocked them off your “to-do” list.

We want to take a little more positive tact with this particular post and talk about some things you definitely want to see in your website. These will seem commonsense, but you'd be surprised how easy it is to miss the obvious during the development process if you haven't done the boring work of documentation and/or workflow analysis.

So here we go...

1. A clear description of who you are and what you do. (See, told you.) Everyone should take Obvious 101 in college and this would be on the syllabus. What we do becomes so second nature to us we forget that we need to continue to tell others.
   
   Some call it a “elevator speech” we've heard it referred to as a “chalk talk”, but whatever you call it – use it! Have images that communicate the message, not just text. If you really want to go to the head of the class; use video to tell your story.  
2. Simple and clear navigation. There is nothing quite as off putting as staring at a webpage and feeling crippled not knowing what to click to get where you think you want to go. Think of navigation as a guided tour of your home. When you moved into your home and people would come over, you would take them around and show them through, right? Where did you start? Exactly, that feature that you like the most. That would serve you well in determining how to set up your navigation.
   
   If you can only show them 3 things, what would they be? That's the most important places you want them to navigate.
3. Easy to locate contact info. You want clients and prospects to contact you, right? Then don't make it tough for them. We recommend the phone number be in both the header AND footer when it's appropriate (and most of the time it is.); use a contact form and allow those that prefer not to use the phone. What about text? If your audience is a bit younger, this may be a great solution. The bottom line is let people communicate with your organization the way they want.

This is only 3 things your website must have. We'd love your opinion – What are YOUR must haves when you are on a website? Take a minute and comment – Thanks!

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