What Makes A Great Website
If you have a business, then you probably have a website or at least you need one. At Blue Whale Media we believe everyone deserves a great site but what actually makes a great website? Great design, easy functionality, Google friendly, GDPR and last but not least it must be secure. All our sites include these features plus more, that’s why our sites are great.
It’s also important to maintain your site with updates and hold it on a fast, reliable server.
Design
The design must be catchy. When someone visits your site, they decide within a few seconds if they are going to stay or leave and try another site. If you think of a magazine its design pulls you in and a website should be no different. You could have the best website going with the perfect content but if someone is not intrigued visually they will not stick around for long.
Functionality
Functionality is important depending on what you plan on doing with your site. If you have a cooking recipe site with a simple page layout then there isn’t much to the functionality, on the other hand, if you would like to make bookings from your site for your salon business your site is going to have a lot more functionality. With more website function usually, there is also an increase in the price due to longer building time.
Google Friendly
Our websites no matter what price or package is Google Friendly. We implement all header and image tags, so Google can read the page. We also add sitemaps which Google likes. We call this “on page SEO (search engine optimisation).” To reduce loading time, which is judged by Google) my using small image files and compressing any videos on the page. Lastly, a good website should be mobile friendly/ optimised. It’s important your website can be viewed on all devices including Desktop, tablets and phones. More and more people are using their smartphones to browse the web.
GDPR
GDPR stands for The General Data Protection Regulation and comes into play on May 25th. It replaced the old Data Protection Act found in 1998. It has taken three years of discussion to be agreed upon although it will help give people more control of their personal or sensitive data. Websites found not to be compliant could receive a fine of 4% of their yearly income.
I found that most websites that are not compliant are due to the way their contact for it set up/ the way site stores data.
Security
Keeping your website secure is very important. If your website is not secure you have the risk of your website and server being hacked. The last thing you want is it being venerable, right? One was you can make your website secure is adding an SSL certificate. This keeps everything locked up as well as providing peace of mind to your users. Having an SSL certificate also helps with Google rankings.