When you design and improve your website, thinking like your customer will likely help you to come up with and implement meaningful changes. You can follow our guidelines to help you design websites that are effectively indexed for Google Search. In addition, you can use Google tools to help you monitor and test your site.
Elements of a great website
What makes a website great depends on who you're trying to attract. For example, if you're looking to attract students to your website to play a game, you'll want to design your website differently than if you're trying to sell auto parts to professional mechanics.
Here are a few tips you might consider:
- Think like your customers
When you plan, design, or evaluate your website, pretend that you're one of your own customers, trying to accomplish a task. Think about what brought the customer there, whether the customer might have questions or a specific goal, and what familiarity the customer has with your products. This can be a difficult task because your knowledge of your products and website will likely be much deeper than your customer's knowledge – consider asking a coworker, friend, or family member who is less experienced with your business and website to navigate it for you. - Include only what you need
For a new customer, unfamiliar websites can be very confusing. Just as you have to make difficult decisions about which products to stock on your shelves or include in your catalog, you'll need to exclude some information from your website to keep it clean and tidy. If you provide too many links, too many images, or too much text, you might confuse a potential customer. Ultimately, a well-organized and clear website can help you increase your return on investment and can improve your landing page experience. - Keep your pages loading quickly
If your customers can't load your page, they can't buy your products! Make sure that your pages will load quickly for all your customers, especially if a segment of your customers uses slower Internet connections (such as dial-up Internet). In general, try to avoid lots of images, large images, and complex website widgets. - Keep your content current
You don't have to spend a lot of time updating your website, but make sure you don't have outdated information, such as announcements for sales that have finished or incorrect pricing. Such details erode your customers' confidence in your website and in your company. - Include contact information
Many customers, especially of stores with physical locations, will go to websites to get contact information. You might want to include this information at the bottom of every page. At the least, you should include a prominent link to your contact information on each page. - Make it mobile
Many of your customers will connect to your website via mobile phones. Many of these phones will not be able to play Flash or handle complex, interactive graphics. Rather than losing these potential customers, provide a way for them to at least get critical information, if not browse your entire website. In fact, if your website has a lot of Flash content, your ads might not be eligible to show on mobile phones.
Hopefully these tips will provide a start in your efforts to design and revise your website. The Internet is a rich resource for more detailed advice in any of these categories.
Improve your search ranking
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – in other words, making your website show up prominently in organic, unpaid search results – can be a complex task. However, many of the things that will make your website attractive to search engines, such as a clear page title and descriptive link text, are also elements that your customers will likely value.
To help you get your page listed in Google's search results, read more in the Webmaster Help Center:
Monitor and test your website
No matter how well you design your website, you'll likely still have elements you can improve. To identify those areas, you might consider using Google Analytics. Google Analytics tracks your website's visitors and tells you how many times your website's pages were viewed, how long people spent on your pages, where your visitors went after viewing a particular page, and more.
Once you've identified where you can improve your website, you'll want to design and publish new pages for it. If you're considering several different designs for a particular page (or even for your entire website), you can use Google Website Optimizer to testwhich page design best encourages your customers to convert through your website.
