According to Internet Live Stats, there are over a billion websites worldwide, and by the time you finish reading this article there will be even more. With so many sites, how can the good ones stand out from the rest? Marketers often use SEO and social media as criteria, or the quality of the content published, but there are in fact many other parameters to take into account when judging the quality of a website. What are they?
The determining factors of a high-performance website
First of all, let’s look at technical performance: how fast does the page display? How big is your web page? Are there many redirect links? If a site performs well from a technical point of view, the visitor’s experience will be better and more pleasant.
A responsive site?
Still on the subject of technical performance, there is the question of display on different platforms. Does the site work well on a tablet? On a smartphone?
The importance of SEO
The third factor to take into account is SEO, i.e. everything necessary to ensure that search engines can easily find the content on your site. If you want traffic to your website, it’s extremely important to make the search engines’ job easier so that you can achieve organic growth.
Safety first!
One factor not to be forgotten is security. Do you have an SSL certificate? This is particularly important if you collect sensitive information and personal data, such as payment details. If you offer the option of paying by credit card, it is essential to have an SSL certificate in place to ensure the security of your customers.
Examples of best practice
If you’d like to see some examples of good practice, take a look at the following sites:
- HBO, which produces Game of Thrones: if you visit their page you’ll see that the display time is extremely fast, that the site is optimized for use on smartphones and tablets and that an SSL certificate is in place. What’s particularly impressive is that they’re able to do all this while also having videos, photos, and forums to animate the fan community. The only thing to improve their site would be to insert additional details to help the bots understand what each page contains. Ideally, we’d also improve performance by ensuring that each page is as light as possible.
- Paypal: it’s not surprising that the site performs well when you have a business that depends on financial transactions. Of course, they have to pay close attention to security, and with the development of mobile technologies it makes sense to also pay attention to perfect display on smartphones and tablets. On the other hand, if you look at the SEO side, there isn’t even a sitemap.
