A website is said be of high quality if it provides specific data and content which can be useful to the users. A website credibility depends on good quality that it offers to the customers and brings satisfaction giving fine user experience. Simply investing huge amount of money on design is not going to guarantee an ace website. Some of them may have fantastic designs, but may not be user friendly or the content of the site may be vague or irrelevant, or it may not have logical navigation from one page to the other etc. It is very difficult to assess the quality of website on each parameter but overall we can say, a high quality website connects well with the customers. A quality website always responds to the issues immediately and keeps its design and content in compliance with the market needs. It is also one of the indicators that search engines consider when assessing the website for rankings.
Some of the parameters that determine website quality are:
Professional design
Today most of the website design is done through using application templates that follow the normal standard format in common. Design is very subjective as some fill their websites with more graphics to attract the users while others keep it simple with easy navigation. The Homepage which is said to be the main landing page for the website must follow certain standards in terms of design and content. Every page element should be in sync to create interest in the users so they can stay longer instead of leaving the site immediately. Try to avoid things like broken links, manipulative hidden links in the text, any inconsistency in style or presentation etc that are considered as low quality techniques.
Logical Navigation
If users are confused and do not find the information they are expecting to see, then it is for sure they are not going to be on the site for long. There is no meaning in having a very creative website if the information is not readily available to the user when it is searched for. The links for “About Us”, “Contact Us”, “Site Map” should be easily accessible on the Homepage as they are very important for your website. When designing the page, standards for the search facility & bread crumb trial should be followed so that the users can find their required information with reduced number of clicks.
Ease of contact or FAQ’S:
Ease of contact is another aspect that can help companies retain their customers for long, especially for retail and e-commerce businesses. Many times, customers try to contact businesses for some query on product clarification and feel very dejected if they do not have clarity on the contact information. Similarly, many business websites overlook the importance of FAQ page thinking that it is not that instrumental in improving their business. Either the site should be active in social media or have good email marketing strategy to be in touch with the customers continuously. In addition to that, the site should clearly state its latest postal address and phone number in “Contact Us” page to make it easy for the customers in case if they like to interact with the business.
Accessibility
Apart from navigation, accessibility is another feature that we can say as very important for a quality website. Imagine, you make all the effort to make it perfect in design and also invest money in digital marketing to rank well in the search engines, but notice that the site is not accessible for users due to some hardware or software issue. This is a heart breaking thing for business owners because no user will like to visit the site that goes down frequently. To address such issues and take the preliminary precautions immediately, it is better to have support services like website monitoring and get your site monitored continuously for any break downs.
Content
Nothing works out well if there is no good content on the website. The content should be relevant, easy to read, factual and free from common grammar & spelling errors. It should be regularly updating not only to create interest in the user but is beneficial from the SEO point of view. Websites with high quality content always ranks well in search engines and promote the businesses in an effective way. No matter how great the design is, if the content is not good, visitors will easily get bored and walk away from the website immediately.
HTTPS
It is the secured version of HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol), where data is sent between the website and the browser in a secured manner. As a part of safety for customer accounts, many quality websites go for HTTPS especially if they are dealing with money transactions and shopping cart. Since the data is in encrypted form, the website will have certain limitations in terms of speed and usability. However, many are keeping these things aside and giving utmost importance to customer safety by switching themselves to secured protocols.
The above are some of the metrics that are considered as extremely valuable in determining the quality of a website.