Anyone who has used the internet will have experienced good and bad websites. However have you ever thought what makes a good one and what makes a bad one? There are some very simple things that you can do to ensure users have a good experience when they come to your website.

Why is it important for users to have a good experience? Well the simple answer to that question is that the better the experience the greater the chance of conversion. The better your website the more confident people will be with you and your company which will result in more sales.

So what are these important elements? Below is a list of them with an explanation of the best way to go about it.

1. Usability

This is how easy it is to get around your website. To have a great usability on your site you need to ensure that you have a high quality navigation system. There are a few things to ensure you include in order to make it easy for people to get around and these are:

a. Link to home page on every page. This will mean that people will always be able to get back to home wherever they are.

b. Contact easy to find. Make sure you include a link to your contact page in your main navigation bar. This will make it easy for people to get in touch if they have a question.

c. Keep deep content to a minimum. Try and make sure you have no pages more than 3 clicks away from the home page so that people can easily find what they are looking for.

d. Plan in advance. It is a good idea to decide what is going to go on your website before you design it. This will allow you to put all your content into categories and decide on the main headings in your navigation bar.

2. Readability

It is important that your visitors can easily read the content on your website. If not they will leave before they have read a word. We would normally recommend having dark text on a light background as this is easiest to read. That is the reason why so many websites have black text on a white background as they know everyone will be able to read this.

You should also think about your use of fonts at this stage. Although many fonts look great and interesting they are not necessarily web safe and so not all visitors will be able to see them. This means you may be losing customers. Stick with a basic web safe font, even if you think it is a bit boring. Remember that people need to be able to read your content.

3. Visibility

By this we mean make your site easy to look at. Don't try to overdo the graphics and have too much going on as this will distract people and make them want to go somewhere else. Try to keep the number of colours you use to a minimum, one or two can work really well.

Finally, think about what you would like from a website and try to put that into action.