What makes a good website?

A bad site...

• Clutters and confuses, which is a sure-fire way to naff users off straight away. The header and navigation area is probably the first thing a user sees and interacts with, so it shouldn’t be laden with an overwhelming amount of links and options to choose from. If someone at a reception or welcome desk threw a hundred different options at you, you’d probably end up not knowing what to do or where to go.

• It speaks its own language – a PhD shouldn’t be a requirement to understand what’s going on, on a site. Baffling users with bizarre computer speak is never going to help anyone, so language should aim to be familiar, descriptive, and helpful. If there’s an error, the problem should be highlighted, and simple instructions given how to fix it. It’s not purely written language that’s an issue either, icons should ideally be from universally understood set (close, play, volume, bin/trash, etc) and labelled, so users know what they’re meant to represent. A rocket ship doesn’t mean “Games” to everyone – Apple!

• Bad sites don’t bother keeping you informed of what’s going on – users should never have to question whether something happened. Think about that beep at the self-checkout, that lets you know you’ve successfully scanned something. If users add something to their basket, they should be notified that that process has taken place. How many times have you taken a screenshot (or a photo if you’re really crazy) of an order screen, because the email confirmation wasn’t in your inbox two seconds after you clicked the Place Order button?

• Backing your users into a corner isn’t a good trait either. How often have you been halfway through a purchase on a certain rainforest named e-commerce site, to find that the shipping costs more than the thing you’re buying, only to discover that the navigation has been hidden, forcing you towards the point of no return. The only way out of the inevitable giant brown box turning up on your doorstep is to quit your browser, turn off your device, and hope that it didn’t actually place the order on your behalf. The kinder way to do it is to allow users to make mistakes and go forwards and backwards through a process or cancel it altogether at any point.

• Abandons consistency – users shouldn’t have to question whether a similar-looking element (button, icon, etc) functions the same thing as on a previous page. An established style should be set and then stuck to throughout the entire user journey. Other experiences set users' expectations, and as Jakob’s law of UX states “people spend most of their time on other websites”. So don’t try being quirky for the sake of it, or just because “you like it” because there’s no guarantee your users will feel the same.

• Is untrustworthy – how many times have you found a product at an unbelievable price, to breathe for a second and realise that the logo looks dodgy, there’s no SSL certificate (the standard for safe secure sites) and the contact details are nowhere to be found.

• They ignore Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) for the 1billion+ users that have some sort of impairment affecting their ability to read the web. This can be anything from poor colour contrast ratios, font sizes that are too small, or inaccessible forms.

• Is slower than a sloth popping to the shops (I know that they don’t actually to go the shops). We all go online to save time, so don’t make users wait forever for your pages to load. If you’re wasting people's time, compared to the industry leaders, they’re not likely to hang around, with 53% of mobile visits being abandoned if a page takes longer than 3 seconds to load. (hobo-web.co.uk)

A good website...

• Should abide by Hick’s Law (the more options presented, the longer it takes to decide) with structured and focused navigation which is simple and intuitive to use. It should group submenus using LATCH (Location, Alphabet, Time, Category, Hierarchy) with any unnecessary links removed.

• It should speak in jargon-free plain English allowing users to fully understand what’s going on and keep them informed of what they need to do.

• It should allow for affordances and give users the control and freedom to do as they wish (to a certain extent).

• It should be designed to be consistent throughout with a thoughtful, uncluttered design that can fade into the background to allow the site to do its thing (good design is invisible after all, according to Don Norman).

• It should be trustworthy with a quality design that includes easy-to-locate contact details.

• All images should be optimised and high quality, after all, over 70% of our sensory receptors are in our eyes.

• Using recognised review sites (Trustpilot, Reviews.io etc) are great ways to build trust with users, as is social proofing through social media channels. Don't forget that according to annexcloud.com 81% of customers make purchasing decisions based on how much they trust a brand

• It should have accessibility at its core with any colour contrasts meeting the minimum recommended ratio of 4.5:1, minimum text sizes should be used throughout – none of this 12pt text nonsense. Any text should be non-justified, and all images should have alt text.

• It should be fast and allow users to get from A to B as quickly as possible. Sure, we haven’t all got endless money and space rockets in our back pockets but optimising your site properly, so it runs quickly is a huge part of improving the user experience and keeping users happy. After all, 80% of internet users are willing to pay extra for a good user experience. (financesonline.com)

In summary, a good website should delight users to keep them coming back. Retention is much cheaper than acquisition and 76% of consumers will quit a brand due to a bad experience.