1. Get rid of as many errors as you can.
A website with loads of errors is on par with sitting next to someone on the bus who hasn’t showered for ages* – it doesn’t make for a pleasant experience. Try to resolve as many errors as possible to make it easier and smoother for the user to visit your website.
2. An attractive homepage.
This seems an obvious thing, but some websites forget that this is the first thing a user will see. There is nothing worse than a flat, boring site with little thought put into the design or usability. See the homepage as the’ front cover’ of your website – this is the page where the user will decide whether or not they want to look through the rest of the site. Making the homepage attractive means having a good design and keeping the user stimulated. Imagine you were buying a new phone, would you buy a phone that only does what it needs to, has a basic design and function and is not really kept up to date? Or would you buy a phone that has a great design, brilliant functionality, is constantly being updated to make it better and has interesting features? You’d prefer the latter.
3. Interesting content.
No one wants to read boring content, it’s as simple as that. Content needs to be relevant to what your site is about. It’s surprising how much content seems to go off on a tangent from the websites purpose, e.g. I visited a website recently about computers and instead of writing content about their products, I found myself reading about Birmingham. I’m sure Birmingham is very interesting, but I’d Google it if I wanted to. Also, I can’t stress enough how important it is to keep the information on your site up to date, industries are changing so rapidly these days that if your site content is outdated, your users will pick up on this.
4. An informative ‘About Us’ page.
Users like to know about the person/company behind the website. Why did you start the website and/or company? What do you want to achieve? An interesting, informative ‘About Us’ page will allow the user to trust your website and more importantly, trust you.
5. Good design.
Would you want to look at something boring or interesting? A good design will show the users that you have made an effort. If you were picking up a date in your car, would you want them to see you in a burnt out three wheeler car, or a brand new sports car? Your site will attract more users if you have a good design.
*If you don’t know what I mean, get on the 201 from Gorton on any warm weekday morning.
