Before you give any thought to the quality of your website, the goal of the site must be clearly defined.
Whether revising an existing page or building a new website. The following criteria contribute to the overall quality of the website and should be checked regularly:
- Design & Layout
- Contents
- Functionality
- Speed
- SEO
Design & Layout
Consistent fonts and matching colors. The font is not too large and not too small, but it is certainly legible. Certain color combinations clash, look bad and make the page illegible.
Ideally, the design reflects the culture of the company, or at least the corporate design, so that the visitor clearly knows which company they are visiting. If it is a dynamic and flexible company, then the website can also be upbeat.
The layout works on a 27-inch 5K screen as well as on a smartphone, and the technology used is called responsive design.
Gif and Flash animations, as they were popular in the 90s, no longer belong on a website. The layout is clear and concise and supports the aim of a website.
Contents
While you can simply hand over the design and layout to an agency, this is less easy for the content. The content is THE most important aspect of a website, because only very few visitors come to a website because of the pretty design, but because they want to complete a task: Obtain information, buy a product, etc.
Content is king. Good content keeps visitors coming back to the site. Google also loves good and new content and will reward the website with a better ranking. Good content is also liked and shared on Facebook and Twitter, which in turn leads to more visitors. However, creating good content is also difficult and takes time and effort.
SEO (search engine optimization)
Good content is already half the search engine optimization. In addition, there is optimization that happens directly on the page, such as good titles, images with titles, fast loading times and suitable metadata, etc.. Equally important, however, are the number of external links that link to your site. More about SEO in an old article: “What does SEO mean”
Functionality
Depending on the page, certain functions are required. A store should offer a shopping cart: How easy is it to buy something? How stable is it? Are there perhaps special functions that make the site stand out, e.g. a live chat function for support, a well-attended forum, etc.?
Speed
Is the page so slow that the visitor leaves before he has even seen the website? The loading speed of a page depends on many factors:
- Where are the servers located?
- How fast are the servers
- How is the site programmed?
- Are there corresponding caching mechanisms?
What does that mean for me?
Take a look at your own website and compare it with other sites you know.