Building a successful website is a lot like putting up a large building. If one of the pillars holding a building up is weak, the whole place becomes unsafe to live in. Websites work the same way: you need to keep all six of what are often called “the six pillars of website development” equally strong.
1. Usability
Your website needs to be fast and easy to use. Every business wants customers to find the products they need as quickly and easily as possible. Along with speed, that means the navigation bar, menus, content, images, videos, links, buttons and forms all need to be well organised.
2. Accessibility
Your website should work for all kinds of customers. That means making sure it opens properly in different browsers and, where it helps, offering more than one language (for example Myanmar, English and Chinese) so language is never a barrier.
3. Aesthetics
This is the look and feel of your website: how you use colour and images, the style of your fonts, and the layout. Many website owners see aesthetics as the most important part, so they focus on it alone and let usability and the other pillars slip.
4. Development
Many owners ignore the website development side because they assume the technical details are beyond them. You don’t need to understand every detail, but you do need a grasp of the main concepts.
Studies suggest that most successful website owners take exactly this approach: they don’t learn development in depth, but they make sure they understand how it works. If you decide you can’t understand it and learn nothing at all, it becomes hard to talk to your developers and hard to ask for what your site actually needs to succeed.
5. Content
Creating content is something the owner has to lead, yet most owners don’t. Strong content is one of the most important ingredients of a successful website. Rather than simply listing products, publishing information that is genuinely useful to your customers keeps them on your site for longer and makes a sale more likely. That is why many website owners now hire copywriters with web experience.
6. Objectives
Even if you get the first five pillars right, you can still lose sight of the bigger picture. That is why clear short-term and long-term objectives matter so much: for example, how much you expect sales to grow from your website investment within six months, and within a year.
Are all six pillars equally strong on your website?
If you’d like help with any part of your website, contact MWD by phone or email.