8 Qualities of a Good Website

A good website combines purposeful content, great user experience (UX) and professional design.

Content: structured with clear purpose, compelling messaging, and relevance.

User experience (UX) and strong performance: featuring intuitive navigation, security, accessibility, fast load times, mobile responsiveness.

Professional web design: builds trust and guides users with clear calls-to-action (CTAs) so visitors can easily find what they need and engage with the brand.

This article dives into 8 qualities of a good website and traits of user-friendly websites with examples and actionable tips you can implement to improve your website.

If you want to know more on the importance of user-friendly websites check out: How to Know if a Website is User Friendly (Quick Read)

Most users want websites to load in under 2 seconds and will abandon one that doesn’t load after three seconds. (2)
Mobile speeds are still something left to be desired. A recent study by Tooltester showed the average web page load time is 2.5 seconds on desktop and 8.6 seconds on mobile, (3)

It is also worth bearing in mind varying response times between different mobile network generations (4G and 5G)

Speed and bounce rates correlation – Source: ThinkwithGoogle

Practical Tips:

• Use Google Page Speed Insights to check page loading speed and will indicate which images need reducing and other areas to improve speed and performance.
• Save images in newer formats such as webp, avif to reduce file sizes without compromising significantly on quality. (Free image converter tool).

Did you know

80% of internet users own a smartphone

and are spending increasing time accessing the Internet via their phones, especially as data costs come down and unlimited data becomes standard.
Therefore, having a responsive layout becomes even more critical.

Ensure your site looks good on both desktop and mobile. It is more important that mobile users can see things without having to zoom in every few seconds and navigate easily throughout the site. (2)
So even if your website passes a mobile-friendly test, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s been fully optimised for the user experience. Your layout still needs to be optimised and easy for people to navigate with one hand.

75% of users navigate and click using their thumbs and 49% click with just one hand.

As you can see from this graphic, there are better places on the screen to interact with one hand. If you have buttons in those red zones, it’s going to frustrate people on your mobile website. (4)

Practical Tip:

If you’re unsure where to start, there are plenty of website themes on some of the most popular website builders with full responsiveness pre-built or the ability to edit for different devices:

WordPress: 300+ Best Website Templates – No-Code Required to Customize

Wix: 2000+ Free HTML5 Website Templates

Squarespace: Website Design Templates

Webflow: Customizable HTML website templates for every need

Shopify (for ecommerce websites): Ecommerce Website Templates

Framer: Website templates for designers, businesses, and personal use

If you’re a website designer/developer or more familiar with responsive web design – also consider the mobile first design approach.

When you place the user at the heart of your design and content, your site will automatically become more user friendly. Users often know precisely what they don’t like about a website.

An effective website design tailors the digital experience to engage and delight the user, retaining and converting target audiences, accounting for their needs, habits, preferences and limitations.

Practical Tip: Getting input directly from your target audience will allow you to discover missing elements you might not see on your own. (2)

Your website needs to have consistency in theme, layout and page to page.

Consider setting some limitations and restrictions so each page has the same layout.

These points help ensure that the user always knows where they are and what they need to do to return to the higher levels of the site.

Practical Tips:

• Limit the number of categories in your navigation bar, place it in the same location on every page.
• Provide transparency – about your content, prices, and contact information, which adds brand credibility. Moreover, showing security elements clearly and visibly (HTTPS/SSL, badges, etc) also helps establish credibility, so users won’t be concerned they clicked on a scam or spam link.
• Consider user journey – how a user gets from homepage to checkout, how long it takes and how many clicks they need to make. Creating a visual sitemap can help you evaluate the user journeys. (1)
• Use breadcrumbs – breadcrumbs are links that show the route to the page you’re on. For pages that require multiple clicks to get to, so users don’t get lost and can easily navigate back and forth to where they want to be at a given time.

Without a visual hierarchy, people might navigate to the wrong page or focus on unimportant components of your website. 

According to a study, these are the most common design elements people expect when they visit a website:

• Logo in the top of screen
• Contact information in top right of screen
• Horizontal main menu navigation in the header at the top of each page
• Search bar in the header
• Social media follow icons in the footer

Practical Tip: Place the most important elements of a page (e.g. images, call to actions) in natural focal points.

Beyond common factors such as size, colour and contrast, take into account use of negative space. The spaces that you don’t use are just as important as those that you do.

Also, consider alignment. Visitors typically read from top to bottom and left to right when they get to a web page in an F pattern. (1)

About 51% of people state they believe complete contact information is something many websites are missing.

The more ways you allow a user to contact you, the better. (2)

Practical Tips:

• Include multiple contact options – a freephone number, a live chat option, a knowledge base, and user forum.
  Include help desk software: AI tools integrations with CRM software, freeing up support agents to spend more time nurturing relations and offering 1-1- support
• Above the fold content – Place the most important marketing messages or ‘calls to action’ ‘above the fold’ ( content on a website that is visible without the user needing to scroll down) where they may be more effective.
• Use at least 3 relevant CTAs on landing pages, one of which would lead to the conversion page/point. (5)
  Use clear, actionable CTA messaging that tells the user exactly what is behind the click – helps guide the user to relevant information and conversion points, 
• Intuitive CTAs – Instead of using vague CTAs like “Next” or “Click Here” tell the user exactly what’s behind the click. Think: “Download PDF” “Sign up Free” “Pay Now”.

Accessible web design exists to ensure that everyone, can access a user friendly web, regardless of their abilities 

There are a number of guidelines and standards that web designers and developers can follow to ensure accessibility.

For a simple overview, read my previous blogs on Digital Accessibility:

What is Accessible Web Design?

How to Make a Website Accessible

Formatting content to be legible and scannable improves the user experience and helps the user find the information that’s most important to them.

Practical Tips:

• To help users scan the page before reading it in more detail, write with short paragraphs and include elements such as headers, subheadings, images, and bullet points with clear use of space.
• Use links to divide content between pages. (1)

Take the first step with our custom website design packages or SEO packages, crafted to not only elevate user-friendliness but also to boost your site’s overall visibility and performance. Let’s work together to create a website that’s welcoming and efficient for all.

1. Characteristics of a user-friendly website, nibusinessinfo.co.uk
2. 27 Eye-Opening Website Statistics: Is Your Website Costing You Clients?, Sweor
3. Web Design: 11 Characteristics of a User-Friendly Website, Industry Dive
4. How to…make sure your website is user friendly, Arts Marketing Association