You have a product/service that you want to market to the global audience. You do your market research, decide your target audience, and develop informative content to promote your brand identity and products/services. Now all you need is a way to display this information to your web audience. This is where a Website comes to play.

Internet promotion is a great way to promote your website; you can market your product/service to a large consumer bank in the shortest possible time and with minimum investment. A website helps you communicate information about your company and product/service to a desired group of web users. Some of the key elements that decide your website’s success on the web are: Content, Website Design and Website Marketing.

A good web design has significant benefits. Of course, what makes a ‘good’ website is still the subject of hot debate among web designers and web developers. Some say an aesthetically designed website with good structure and quality content is what makes an effective website. Others opine if a website works with the target audience and yields the desired results, aesthetics is secondary and the website may yet be considered as ‘good’.

How to Design a ‘Good’ Website?

Create User-focused Designs – Websites are designed to convey and communicate information about a company’s product or services to its visitors. A website is made of a number of web pages, each web page containing informative content that is thought to be useful to its readers. The effectiveness of content will be decided by a user’s behavior after he has finished reading that content. Typically, a positive behavior or action is one which produces the desired results for the website. Example, customer buys a product, subscribes to a newsletter, ‘shares’ information, etc.

However, all this can only be achieved if the website user can find information on the website quickly and easily. A user-focused design allows this. A structured navigation means ease of accessibility of information. The quicker the information is available to a user, the greater the chance of a favorable user action. Of course, quality of content is important and will ultimately decide if, or not, the user takes an action.

Design optimization is crucial. Images, media files, Flash files and content should load quickly. If your website takes more than 1 to 2 minutes to load, customers will skip to another website.

Content readability is important. Design text so it is easily readable to users. Font size, font style, bullet lists, H1, H2 and sub-headings, and bold text increase the readability of your content. Readable content means better understandability of information and higher chances of favorable actions.

Get Custom Website Designs – Unless you specify custom designs, most web designers will use website templates to design web pages. Always insist on custom designs for heightened flexibility of navigation and development of specialized design features, web forms, shopping carts, CMS integration, etc.

Customizing your website to suit your brand’s identity gives it an authentic value. Although website templates can be customized too, building customized websites from scratch ensures additions and changes as and when desired.

Communicate with Website Designers – You must communicate frankly with your web designers and explain your needs in clear and precise terms. Clear communication can help you build a website that is user-friendly, interactive, useful, and effective. Clear communication means less trial and error, re-work and time and money investment.