How to create a good Website?

[kcaps]

Hello everyone, I'm currently struggling to find out what needs to be on a good website.

From what I saw, the design doesn't matter too much, sure it can look fancy with all the animations, but most of the business owners dont care about the look, because they want users who visit their website.

So, personally I've settled with Wordpress and I can work with Gutenberg blocks, Elementor, Divi and Bricksbuilder, I also don't have a problem with creating dynamic data such as creating a listing.

Currently I have a customer who already has a website but it doesnt get that much attention, so I'm wondering: How to create a (better) website?

What needs to be on a good website, especially the front page/landing page, what is important to show?

Does it depend on the business, e.g. a barber shop shows different things than a therapist?

Is there like a "general rule" or is it enough to check templates for the specific business and then change the content to their needs?

Thanks!

 

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[theOfficialRJ]

Yes, it largely depends on the niche. But most importantly, put yourself in the shoes of the customer. What information would they want to see on the website? Look at other websites in the same niche. How are they structured? Do they all follow a specific pattern?

Without information on the niche or the company that's all I can suggest. Good luck!

 

[kcaps]

Yeah I assume that's my current problem, "How will the customer see the website and what is important for them when they visit it", so basically how to structure the website with subpages.

But yes, it is an good idea to check the competing websites, since I have access to semrush and AHrefs.

 

[puredot]

Hey @kcaps !

Do you mean that people do not visit the website or they do not stay for long for it (bounce rate is high)?

If it's the former - there are many ways to get traffic to your website. You can read about SEO or paid ads or any other channel you can imagine.

If it's the latter - you could try to read about sales process, copywriting and such. An order of information on your website IS important.

 

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[kcaps]

I might have another potential customer which already has a good website with good traffic, but the bounce rate is pretty high.

So for customer A I probably have to do some SEO / marketing and for customer B I have to learn about copywriting / sales.

What I noticed is probably my mindset, I want the "perfect" website (perfectionism?) for the customers but I think too complicated to create it, such as: whats the right tool, if I use tool X the website will be slow, if its slow the customer will ask me to make it faster, then I have to transfer the website to another tool and so on, all that takes time and also wastes time.

 

[EN_VY]

Hello everyone, I'm currently struggling to find out what needs to be on a good website.

From what I saw, the design doesn't matter too much, sure it can look fancy with all the animations, but most of the business owners dont care about the look, because they want users who visit their website.

So, personally I've settled with Wordpress and I can work with Gutenberg blocks, Elementor, Divi and Bricksbuilder, I also don't have a problem with creating dynamic data such as creating a listing.

Currently I have a customer who already has a website but it doesnt get that much attention, so I'm wondering: How to create a (better) website?

What needs to be on a good website, especially the front page/landing page, what is important to show?

Does it depend on the business, e.g. a barber shop shows different things than a therapist?

Is there like a "general rule" or is it enough to check templates for the specific business and then change the content to their needs?

Thanks!

First off, stay away from those bloated builders like Elementor, Divi, etc unless you want to produce medeicore work. I myself use Oxygen Builder for Wordpress, however if you are new to web design this might take a while for you to start. A couple of "gurus" will tell you that it doesn't matter how you build a website, but if you want to do it right, I suggest staying away from those builders.

For the most part a website has to build trust with visitors, and showcase the services offered. I have different approach depending on each client but on the homepage I usually include a unique value propositions, an outline of services, testimonials, contact form, etc. Sometimes I'll look at the big dogs to see what they are doing. For example, if I'm working with a small plumbing company, I'll look at national plumbing companies like ARS Rescue Rooter or 1-800 plumber. After all, these companies have been around, and have tested what works and what doesn't. Although these companies operate at a larger scale, you can always learn something from them.

It also depends on what your skill levels are, and how creative you can get.

 

[KushShah9492]

In general, you can follow the following steps to make an effective website.
1. Address the person(your audience), the problem they are facing, and the pain that problem is causing in some detail.
2. Share a story. A solution of how that product has solved a problem for someone. Provide testimonials to show the credibility of your product.
3. Clear CTA: Once you've established your message with the above steps, provide a no-nonsense, crystal clear call to action to direct your customer in the right direction.

There could be variations, but the gist of this framework remains the same.

 

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[alexkuzmov]

Hello everyone, I'm currently struggling to find out what needs to be on a good website.

From what I saw, the design doesn't matter too much, sure it can look fancy with all the animations, but most of the business owners dont care about the look, because they want users who visit their website.

So, personally I've settled with Wordpress and I can work with Gutenberg blocks, Elementor, Divi and Bricksbuilder, I also don't have a problem with creating dynamic data such as creating a listing.

Currently I have a customer who already has a website but it doesnt get that much attention, so I'm wondering: How to create a (better) website?

What needs to be on a good website, especially the front page/landing page, what is important to show?

Does it depend on the business, e.g. a barber shop shows different things than a therapist?

Is there like a "general rule" or is it enough to check templates for the specific business and then change the content to their needs?

Thanks!

This is a very general question with no str8 answer.
If I could give you a general rules its this one:

Make something, put it out there and add in tools which help you track user behaviour and outcome (conversion if thats the case).

There is no such thing as a perfect website, however some general guidelines are:

- About us page
- GDPR
- Contact form
- Legal pages
- Crystal clear images
- Mobile optimized design(as in high page speed score)
- Complementary colors

There are many many MANY more, but that doesnt matter
It matters what the site exists for, what it will be used for and does it get the outcomes that the client is seeking.

I recommend using: Google Analytics and Hotjar as a start.

So put something out there, make in mobile frienly, add in the legal texts, send out links to people that might be interested and then analize analize analize.
The data will tell you what you are doing wrong and right.

 

[Cameraman]

For reference, divi is no longer bloated since the release in August 2021. It now strips out all excess CSS, fonts and Javascript to only include what's essential. Most of my pages load sub 1 second on a regular SiteGround hosting plan.




That said, the internet is full of people who hamper their site using poorly designed plugins that kill performance.

 

[kcaps]

Oh divi got better? I think I touched it like last year or beginning of this year and it still was horrible, even with caching and on a Vultr VPS with all that fancy custom nginx flags no one really cares about, so I never really touched it again, before that I created one website with it and just called it a day.

But overall I know that page builders arent perfect, speaking of Elementor, Divi, Brizy, WPBakery and probably all of the custom page builders from the "top 10 wordpress themes on themeforest", even with caching, CDN, using a VPS they still add bloat and takes time to optimize.

(big) BUT: Is it really worth to learn something like Oxygen builder (which has a steep learning curve), just to get 0.5s loading speed instead of like 0.8s or 1.2s but getting the job done faster?

I mean I've seen websites which take like 7 or 8 seconds to fully load, they were built with Elementor and they had tons of photos on their website including a woocommerce store, so not sure if it would help to either use Oxygen or keep Elementor but instead optimize the website and photos and use a proper caching with a CDN, if its a potential customer.

@Cameraman Is this with any caching in place? Such as WP Rocket? Or just using Divis internal tweaks? Because that looks pretty decent for a Divi website hosted on SiteGround.

 

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[Cameraman]

Oh divi got better? I think I touched it like last year or beginning of this year and it still was horrible, even with caching and on a Vultr VPS with all that fancy custom nginx flags no one really cares about, so I never really touched it again, before that I created one website with it and just called it a day.

But overall I know that page builders arent perfect, speaking of Elementor, Divi, Brizy, WPBakery and probably all of the custom page builders from the "top 10 wordpress themes on themeforest", even with caching, CDN, using a VPS they still add bloat and takes time to optimize.

(big) BUT: Is it really worth to learn something like Oxygen builder (which has a steep learning curve), just to get 0.5s loading speed instead of like 0.8s or 1.2s but getting the job done faster?

I mean I've seen websites which take like 7 or 8 seconds to fully load, they were built with Elementor and they had tons of photos on their website including a woocommerce store, so not sure if it would help to either use Oxygen or keep Elementor but instead optimize the website and photos and use a proper caching with a CDN, if its a potential customer.

@Cameraman Is this with any caching in place? Such as WP Rocket? Or just using Divis internal tweaks? Because that looks pretty decent for a Divi website hosted on SiteGround.

I agree something like Oxygen may give better results but there wasn't a great deal of choice. I opted for divi as the best combination of speed of build/ease of learning at the time. Now I have too invested in the platform to migrate. I would rather invest the time/money in my business.

Yes, these figures are with WP Rocket for caching. I did though turn it off and ran the metrics again so you could see the difference.



This is pure divi and it takes 1.3 seconds to be fully loaded. Not the fastest but it's still better than many sites (especially my competitors).

 

[EN_VY]

For reference, divi is no longer bloated since the release in August 2021. It now strips out all excess CSS, fonts and Javascript to only include what's essential. Most of my pages load sub 1 second on a regular SiteGround hosting plan.

View attachment 40803


That said, the internet is full of people who hamper their site using poorly designed plugins that kill performance.

What are your scores on the mobile tab of Google Pagespeed Insights? I find it easy to get 100 on GTMetrix. The sites I have on Oxygen sometimes have a combination of a 10mb self hosted videos, animations, hd images etc, 3rd party scripts etc and I still get 90+ on mobile. I despise Divi, so haven't checked but maybe they really stepped it up.

To the OP, if you aren't familiar with CSS/HTML, I would stay away from Oxygen for now. But yeah, look at what the top competitors are doing and then improve on that for your customers.

 

[Cameraman]

What are your scores on the mobile tab of Google Pagespeed Insights? I find it easy to get 100 on GTMetrix. The sites I have on Oxygen sometimes have a combination of a 10mb self hosted videos, animations, hd images etc, 3rd party scripts etc and I still get 90+ on mobile. I despise Divi, so haven't checked but maybe they really stepped it up.

To the OP, if you aren't familiar with CSS/HTML, I would stay away from Oxygen for now. But yeah, look at what the top competitors are doing and then improve on that for your customers.

Here's the Mobile page score using the Chrome Developer Tools report and Lighthouse.


I think the scores are quite reasonable. And whilst I know how to use CSS/HTML/Python/PHP/Javascript etc I find building my pages with Divi just fine. I might not choose it as my solution today if I were starting again but I'm kind of locked into it now. As I mentioned I don't want to spend the time or money migrating to something else.

 

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[kcaps]

What are your scores on the mobile tab of Google Pagespeed Insights? I find it easy to get 100 on GTMetrix. The sites I have on Oxygen sometimes have a combination of a 10mb self hosted videos, animations, hd images etc, 3rd party scripts etc and I still get 90+ on mobile. I despise Divi, so haven't checked but maybe they really stepped it up.

To the OP, if you aren't familiar with CSS/HTML, I would stay away from Oxygen for now. But yeah, look at what the top competitors are doing and then improve on that for your customers.

At the moment, if a customer wants/needs a fast page I will use Gutenberg blocks or Bricksbuilder, which is similar to Oxygen builder, except a Popup builder AND fast website is needed, then I have to use Gutenberg Blocks (Kadence with Conversion plugin) because Bricksbuilder doesnt have a popup builder yet, for everything else I'm good with Elementor I think, since its the fastest way to create websites for me.

I do know HTML/CSS but I would say I'm at a beginner to intermediate level.

 

[Hitch-hiker]

Why not to use html and css only?
Wouldn't it be much faster than WordPress with page builder?

 

[Hitch-hiker]

Why not to use html and css only?
Wouldn't it be much faster than WordPress with page builder?

 

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[Zedd9165]

Why not to use html and css only?
Wouldn't it be much faster than WordPress with page builder?

I was also going to suggest this. You can use bootstrap which also gives amazing results in terms of site's aesthetics and speed and other overall performance. But for that you would have to know HTML CSS javascript.

 

[Hitch-hiker]

I was also going to suggest this. You can use bootstrap which also gives amazing results in terms of site's aesthetics and speed and other overall performance. But for that you would have to know HTML CSS javascript.

There is even website which is like elementor but for html and css - Webflow: Create a custom website | No-code website builder
So no need to have html knowledge anymore.