15 Essentials of a Successful Website with Examples

When hundreds of web sites are designed up every other day, your website need to have something special to attract your potential customers. This time, Bestpsdtohtml decided to work upon the successful websites and its essential characteristics. If the users enjoy moving through your website, you are going to be heavily benefited, but if opposite is the case, you will be into trouble. Certainly, a Web site does not necessarily have all of the following mentioned characteristics to be successful but still it will give you some ideas.So, have fun reading out all the essentials and checking out the examples too….

1. User Friendly

If you expect more people to sign up, you must understand that they want least possible information to be filled up. If you require street number, zip code, telephone number etc. etc., the user should also be made clear that why you need that information.
Each blank should be as simple as possible and so that even a stupidest visitor should get along with your form to be filled up.

The Super form of Twitter

Twitter’s success is no accident. The Registration Form is one of the best forms any website ever had. First, the user is supported by the evidence and secondly, Twitter asks for very little genuinely required information.

2. Focusing on the simple interface

The best creation is not where you can’t add anything, but where you can remove anything. Make the user’s interaction with you as simple as possible by leaving out all unnecessary things.

Amazing Google

Google has analyzed why a huge number of visitors visit the site. The answer is Incredibly how easy is the interface of Google. They concluded that why should they need to add more information and thus make the design confuse and lengthen the loading time?

3. Simple and professional Design

A good website have an attractive layout that is easy on the eyes. The design of a good website should be simple, yet professional .The design should not be distracting or should take you away from the content . Websites with excessive use of Flash and moving images can be very distracting. Lots of text can overwhelm a user. Breaking up text into subheads and bullet points will improve the layout of the page and make the text more scannable. No one has time to read every word on a page.

Professional design of PixelCrayons

PixelCrayons.com is a well known name in designing world now. It has a very simple but professional design. Simplicity is the best way to attract. Complex things cannot be perceived by everyone.

4. Javascript

The technique, selectively, offers a real value and is more than just a gimmick. It improves the experience on the site. Some large sites make use of this technique but it is of no use, because the page does not reload.

faz.net stands on JavaScript

Faz.net offers a lot more content to the visitors yet without making it confusing. It is true that images cannot replace the text completely. Therefore some information appear in some images on FAZ.net if you hover the mouse over it.

Tips for Using JavaScript

• Do not overdo – Do not use JavaScript for every other purpose. Especially you should not hide important information behind tabs.
• Avoid unnecessary effects – Those effects which take a lot of time to load is of no use and should not be made in any case.

5. Icons

Icons are a great source of identification. It makes sure that user arrives at its required destination without any confusion. It can process images or symbols which is much faster than text. However, it is necessary that users would be able to recognize the icon and developers need to arrange the icons tactfully. Otherwise icons are nice to look at but would be completely useless.

Apple Icons

Apple uses icons from their programs and also to visually represent the information on the page, thereby assisting the user making the surfing more efficient.

Tips for using icons

• Icons should be clear and simple: Keep the icons simple and clear. They should communicate something quickly and this is their only purpose. They should be unique and should match with the idea for what they are designed for.
• Icons should adhere to some standards: Never use too many icons, color should be appropriate and should be according to the target audience.

6. Different kinds of Media

The Internet has miraculous advantages and one of them is the fact that we can offer different kinds of media on a page. So you can write news in text, publish, communicate via video or audio podcast depending upon requirement or your wish.

Audio and Video at ARD

The ARD provides not only news from all around the world, but also video and audio podcasts as well as individual clips that provides users value addition.

7. Eye Catchers

Web designers have the opportunity to draw the eye of the beholder. The main resources are size, color and contrast, but also other graphical tricks like out of the Border. Eye-catchers can be opportunity advantage. Good web designers may need to make that take the eyes of 98% of users the same way.

last.fm catches attention with red

last.fm thought to influence the visitors as much as possible. Due to the red color of signal, eye falls mostly firstly on the navigation bar. It used large fonts to create a hierarchy and to highlight an out of the Border element to a new function.

8. Grid

Raster design is an essential capability of web design. Grids are the best way to organize information to present. The more content a website has the more important it is also a grid.

Intelligent Griding at NYtimes

The New York Times has huge content on its website. To organize it, need grids. You can see how flexible a grid is. It is an extremely difficult task to organize enough content. Through the grid it becomes possible.

9. Interaction

If you can spare some time to notice that the users of the most successful sites can do more than surf from page to page. If you want to bind user and wants to make a website interesting, you should try to give them the opportunity to participate in any way.

Interaction on Digg

Digg is not only a list of links, but also allows users to access these links, and comment on that to share the ideas, opinions and thoughts.

10. Primary Horizontal Navigation

Horizontal navigations are seen on almost every website. There is often a second vertical navigation. Horizontal navigations do not need as much space down. Moreover navigations should always be above the content. This fills a horizontal menu completely.

Horizontal Navigation in mdr

Tips for navigation

• Split – If you want to offer too many menu items, you should divide the menu into different meaningful levels.
• Do not reinvent wheel – Navigations are on the left of the content. Who wants to stand out, they can place the right of the content. What is certain is that the navigation should always be as far above and the one best structures in this case should not be reinvented.
• Different ways to offer – You can use sitemaps and breadcrumb navigations to give your users several options for navigation.

11. Reader friendly

These days the websites are the foremost gateway of communication and is a key task of Web designers to package the information so that Internet users can read them as perfectly as possible. CSS provides several ways to significantly improve the typography of a website.

Enjoy reading Smashing Magazine

The headings created a very pleasant and above all very easy to understand hierarchy. The list does the rest. In addition, the author repeatedly uses bold font to emphasize particularly important information.

Tips for a reader-friendly page

• Taking advantage of CSS capabilities– As smashing magazine emphasizing simply the typography of a web page.
• Hierarchy – Divide your text under headings and sub headings so that it quickly catches the attention of reader and he can come back if he wants to re read some content.
• Constance – In order to orientate your readers to each base, you should take care of hierarchy, font color, link color, etc.
• Short texts – The internet should formulate concise texts. Unnecessary text have to be left out, because nobody likes to read excessive text on the screen.
• Emphasize key points – You can display text in bold and italic. Use these opportunities to provide guidance to your readers.

12. Mobile Interface

Most of us make use of mobile internet. Therefore, it is essential to offer a version of the Web site that is tailored to mobile devices.

Getting Mobile with NetVibes

Tips for creating a mobile version

• Do advertising – Show your visitors that you offer this option. Optimal condition is when mobile devices are directly routed to the appropriate version.
• Easy to operate – The mobile version should be refrained from advertising and should contain only the main things.
• Range of functions – You have to give your users largest possible range of functions but the smallest possible loading time.

13. Alignment

Alignment plays an important role in taking your site designs from looking amateur to professional .Doing so cleans up your designs and gives you an awesome framework to work from.

Right Alignment of Blackestate

This site is showcased on the 960 Grid Website. It’s alignment is consistent and striking. They performed a good job with generous amounts of white space and contrasting sized fonts.

14. Proximity

Last, but not the least is Proximity. This has to do with grouping of like elements together and separating those that are not. It can spoil user’s experience by grouping everything under one text block. That’s why its very important to use header tags and proper spacing.

Proximity of Envato

This site does a beautiful job of organizing it’s content into three major categories. They are well spaced and clearly defined.

15. Successful appearance

A successful event should look like successful too. In fact, users prefer to stay on sites , which look to be larger, and famous in the specific field. Methods used include, for example, large number of comments and advertisements.

Sucess of Smashing Magazine

The smashingmagazine shows its success with different means. In the sidebar, there are various forms of advertisements which is a clear sign for many visitors. The impression of positive 75 comments is amazing, depicting that it is hugely read and liked by its readers.

Hope you enjoyed the post. Social bookmarking and comments are welcome as ever.