Manticorn Marketing and Design

The most important quality of any website is that it functions the way you expect and accomplishes the purpose you want it to achieve - whether that is to inform, entertain, sell something, etc.

I could build you the most beautiful site complete with CSS animations, but if it doesn't help you achieve your underlying goal, then your site will never be truly "great" in your own eyes. By underlying goal, I mean the real goal you had in the back of your mind when you first decided you need a website, the one that most web designers never ask about because they're so focused on the cool tech stuff they can do for you.

That being said, there are 4 objective points you want to check off the list in order for your site to function optimally and appeal to the most visitors:

1. Security
Have you taken the necessary steps to protect your site from things like malicious code injections and brute force attacks? At the very least, you need a properly installed SSL certificate to verify your identity, even if you're not taking payments online. Beginning in July 2018, Google Chrome browser has started labelling every site without SSL as "unsecured", which scares away a lot of traffic. So if you don't have a little green lock icon on your browser bar, know that you are losing visitors.

2. Speed
Websites that take more than 1-2 seconds to load experience a 70% increase in bounce rate (the percentage of visitors immediately leaving your site). Those that choose to remain experience impatience and frustration - two feelings you probably don't want associated with you. Google has been incorporating page load speed as a ranking factor since 2010, but has made it official in July 2018.

3. Responsive Design
Whether someone is looking at your site on a massive widescreen monitor or a smart phone, you want everything to be easy to read and easy to navigate. That means your site needs to accommodate different viewport widths and adjust its content accordingly, lest you leave your mobile visitors to "pinch and pull" their screens in anger. With more than half of all internet traffic in the US now coming from mobile phones, having a site that works on all types of devices has gone from "nice to have" to "must have".

4. Accessibility
Both Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act and Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) consist of laws and guidelines with the same goal: to make electronic information available to people with sensory disabilities in a way that is comparable to the access available to others. Public entities and nonprofits receiving federal funding must adhere to 508, while all business websites should meet ADA standards to the extent they can. Not only do you reduce your risk of a lawsuit, most the markup requirements give a huge boost to your search engine placement.