CWS Web Marketing Blog

7 Features of Highly Effective Web Sites

~ October 07, 2006 ~

Designing an effective web site involves far more than looks. Crucial aspects of content, navigation, and functionality have a bottom-line impact on site performance. What’s more, these aspects are so interrelated that ignoring any one of them can diminish the effectiveness of the others. Even if you have Pulitzer-prize winning content, a weak navigation system will cause your site to underperform. Stunning design will all go to waste if visitors abandon your site because the pages are too slow to load.

. . . and thereby hangs a list. We’ve evaluated hundreds of sites and studied the best practices of the most successful ones. We then distilled their common traits into these seven primary categories. A good traffic analysis program can pinpoint how well your site manifests these traits. If it scores well for all seven features, then you’ve probably got a winner.
To learn more about what your web stats can tell you, see our free guide “How Does Your Web Site Measure Up?”

1. Measurable Objective

your goal for the site along with the mechanism that allows you to measure achievements towards that goal (e.g., online purchases, responses via a feedback form, subscriptions to an online newsletter, etc.)

2. Engaging Content

clearly written, logically organized, persuasive where it needs to be, free of typos and grammatical errors

3. Clear Navigation

visitors intuitively find their way to desired content and are directed towards important offers, which are no more than a click or two from the home page

4. Visitor Friendly Environment

visitors readily find answers to their questions or have easy means of contacting owner; includes trust-building measures such as privacy policies, company bios, history

5. Search Engine Accessibility

includes keyword-rich content, absence of frames, minimal Flash, proper use of metatags, description and alt tags

6. Complete Functionality

pages download rapidly, consistent results across platforms and with major browsers, no broken links

7. Visual Appeal

site projects the desired image for the owner and encourages visitors to come often and stay awhile

At Concord Web Solutions, we take an integrated approach to web site development that focuses on all seven of these features. By understanding how these features interrelate and applying tested strategies to the design and development of our sites, we get results for our clients.