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How to Create a Successful Website
Shreya Bose, Technical Content Writer at BrowserStack - August 20, 2020
Since the digital landscape is central to all businesses right now, creating a successful website is mandatory for anyone seeking to make money, gain recognition, and establish brand value online. Now, the success of a website will certainly depend on guidelines that are specific to whatever product or industry it caters to.
But there are a few general guidelines that are applicable and should form the basis of any website design blueprint. In other words, all successful websites have the following features in common, and no website can be built without taking the list below into consideration.
6 Things to Make a Successful Website
1. High Page Load Speed
This cannot be stressed enough. When thinking about how to make a successful website, always consider page load speed as a major priority. Remember the below stats from reasons for slow loading websites,
- 47% of consumers expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less
- 40% of people abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load
- a 1-second delay in page response can result in a 7% reduction in conversions
High page load speed is the first thing a user expects when accessing a website. Failure on this point will repel users, and prevent them from even sampling anything else the site has to offer.
There are multiple resources available online that explain how to increase website speed. Additionally, one must regularly conduct website speed tests to ensure that the site loads at lightning speed on a variety of real browsers and devices. If a website loads quickly on the iPhone X but takes 10 seconds to load on a Samsung Galaxy A51, then a sizable section of potential customers are bouncing off, thus depriving the site of views and revenue.
BrowserStack’s SpeedLab allows users to run free speed tests on real browsers and devices. Simply enter the website URL, click Start, and receive a detailed report on how quickly the site loads on the most popular devices and browsers. Additionally, users receive a report of how the website fares on desktop and mobile devices, thus offering significant market coverage in speed testing.
2. Check Cross Browser Compatibility
More than 4 billion people access the web through combinations of:
- Understand Device Fragmentation: 9000+ distinct devices, shipped with 21 different operating systems (vendor + version), along with 8 major browser engines that power hundreds of browsers
- Combined, they make at least 63,000 possible browser-platform-device combinations. And those are the ones we know of, at this time.
To be successful, a website must be able to function properly on multiple browsers running on multiple devices (including multiple versions of the same browser, or device manufacturers). Cross browser compatibility is central to ensuring high traffic to a website.
It is easy to execute cross browser testing on a website. Simply sign up for Browserstack for free, choose the required device-browser-OS combinations, and start testing the website. Choose from a massive range of 2000+ real browsers and devices, including the latest as well as legacy devices. Test on as many devices, as possible to ensure that the website is accessible to everyone regardless of the device they are using.
Try Cross Browser Compatibility Testing for Free
3. Responsive Design
When equipped with responsive design, a website adapts to a variety of screen sizes without affecting usability and user experience. In other words, depending on the screen size, the web site’s text, UI elements, and images rescale and resize so that they appear convenient and visually pleasing.
Read More: What is the ideal Screen Size for Responsive Websites
Responsive design allows developers to write a single set of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code for multiple devices, platforms, and browsers. It is device-agnostic and aligns with the popular development philosophy of Don’t Repeat Yourself (DRY).
While it can be challenging to make an existing site responsive, the benefits of investing in responsive design early on in a project far outweigh the effort required to achieve it.
Now, once responsive design has been implemented, it needs to be verified for accuracy on multiple real browsers and devices. Use our free responsive design checker to check how a website looks on the most popular browsers and devices. Remember, Google prioritizes mobile-friendly websites, which means any website without responsive design stands to lose out in terms of their position on Google search and SEO relevance.
4. Reliability
When brainstorming on how to build a successful website, ensure that website reliability is being taken care of. This means that the website should run with minimal downtime and should be up 24/7. Additionally, it should be able to offer what it promises. For example, if a website promises that it will send notifications and emails with relevant information after a user has signed up or dropped their email, then that function should be executed accurately and at the promised frequency.
Consider that if a website becomes popular, it will be offering services to millions of people. In that case, it should be able to provide every promised service for every single user. This would not just require a robust design but also strong servers in necessary locations.
5. Security
Data security is at the tip of everyone’s tongue these days. This is for good reason, because increased internet usage has exposed everyone’s data to infiltration and unethical usage. Any website that fails to protect its users’ data will not just be discarded, but also be actively derided across the internet. That usually has a very adverse effect on traffic, credibility, and revenue potential.
- Ensure the website is secure and uses SSL encryption.
- Ensure passwords are encrypted and not displayed in plain text. Do not allow users to reset passwords without asking security questions.
- Host the website on a provider with features like web application firewall (WAF) and denial-of-service (DDoS) protection.
- Install backup systems that can revive the website in case of a server failure.
6. Scalability
Think of how to build an effective website. Chances are, the website will become successful, gain increasing numbers of traffic with more users signing up, make purchases, or asking for some kind of service. If the website cannot ensure that it can serve increasing numbers of users with the same high levels of efficiency, it will lose users fast.
Scalability shouldn’t just apply to a website’s user interface but also the back-end database, APIs, and services as well. It doesn’t matter how many users are flocking to a site, it should be able to provide everyone with the optimal user experience at any point of time, from any device in any part of the world.
Successful websites are not easy to create, but they are worth the effort. Incorporate the guidelines in this article, and start building a website that is fast, result-oriented, high functioning, and generally appealing to the maximum number of users.
BrowserStack’s mission is to empower developers to build amazing experiences. We are the world’s leading software testing platform powering over two million tests every day across 15 global data centers. We help Microsoft, Twitter, Barclays, Expedia and over 25,000 customers deliver quality software at speed by moving testing to our Cloud.
