What makes a good website?

A good website answers the visitor's question quickly, makes it obvious what to do next, and gives them a reason to believe you. Almost everything else is detail.

That sounds too simple, so here is what it means in practice, and the specific things that separate sites which bring in enquiries from sites which just exist.

It says what you do in three seconds

Somebody arriving on your homepage is asking one silent question: am I in the right place?

They give it about three seconds. In that time the page has to say what you do, who it is for, and roughly where you are if that matters. Not your values, not your history, not "welcome to our website".

The test is simple. Show your homepage to somebody outside your industry for three seconds, take it away, and ask what the business does. If they cannot say, the headline is doing nothing.

It is written for the reader, not the business

Count how many times the word "we" appears on your homepage, then count "you". If "we" wins, the page is about you and the reader has already gone.

The most useful reframe is to write the page as answers rather than adjectives. People arrive with questions: what does it cost, how long does it take, have you done this before, what happens next. A page that answers those in plain language beats one full of words like innovative, bespoke and passionate, all of which mean nothing because everybody claims them.

It gives some idea of price

The single most common reason people leave a service website is that they cannot work out roughly what it costs, so they go and ask somebody who tells them.

You do not have to publish a price list. A range, a starting point, an example project, or an honest explanation of what drives the number is enough. What loses the enquiry is silence, because silence reads as expensive.

It proves other people trusted you

Nobody believes a business describing itself. They believe evidence.

The things that work are specific and verifiable: named clients, real reviews, recent work with a photograph, numbers where you have them, accreditations if your sector cares about them. The things that do not work are stock photography, unattributed quotes, and logos of organisations you once had a meeting with.

Put the proof where the decision happens, which is next to the thing being decided, not on a separate testimonials page nobody visits.

Getting in touch is easy

Contact is where a surprising number of otherwise decent sites lose the enquiry.

The form should ask for the least it possibly can. Name, email, message. Every extra field costs you responses, and asking for a budget before somebody knows whether they like you costs you a lot of them. Say what happens next and how quickly, because "we will be in touch" is not reassuring.

And offer an alternative. Some people will never fill in a form. A visible phone number and email address cost nothing.

It is fast

Speed is not a nice to have, it is a conversion issue. People leave slow pages, and they leave mobile slow pages faster.

The usual causes are unremarkable: enormous images that were never resized, too many third party scripts, cheap hosting. None of them are difficult to fix and all of them are routinely ignored.

It works properly on a phone

Most people will see your site on a phone, standing up, one handed, possibly on poor signal. That is the real viewing condition, not your desktop monitor.

Which means tappable buttons, readable text without pinching, forms that work with a thumb, and a phone number you can press to call. Test it yourself in that condition rather than by shrinking a browser window.

Anyone can use it

Accessibility gets talked about as a legal box to tick, and in the UK there are obligations under the Equality Act. But the practical case is simpler: an accessible site is a clearer, faster, better organised site, and the same work that helps somebody using a screen reader helps everybody else too.

Sufficient colour contrast, real text rather than words baked into images, descriptive links, alt text, and a page you can navigate with a keyboard. None of it is exotic and all of it is regularly skipped.

Somebody can update it

The best site in the world decays if nobody can change it. Prices go out of date, the team changes, services move on.

If updating your own website requires a developer, a phone call and a quote, it will not get updated, and within two years it will be quietly misrepresenting your business. Make sure somebody in the building can change the things that change.

What does not make a website good

Three things get a great deal of attention and matter far less than people think.

How it looks to you. Your taste is not the audience's. A site you find slightly plain that converts well is a better website than a beautiful one that does not.

Animation. Motion used deliberately helps people understand what is happening. Motion used decoratively slows the page and gets in the way.

Being different for its own sake. Conventions exist because people have learned them. Putting the navigation somewhere unusual does not make you memorable, it makes you harder to use.

A short test you can run today

Open your site on your phone and answer these honestly:

1. Does the first screen say what you do and who for?
2. Can you find a rough idea of price in under thirty seconds?
3. Is there proof somebody else trusted you, on the page where it matters?
4. Can you make contact in two taps?
5. Did it load before you got impatient?

Most sites fail two of those, and fixing them is nearly always cheaper than a redesign.

Examples of what that looks like in practice are in our work.

Frequently asked questions

What makes a website good?

It says what you do within three seconds, is written to answer the reader's questions rather than describe the business, gives some indication of price, proves other people trusted you, makes contact easy, loads quickly, works properly on a phone, is accessible, and can be updated by somebody in the business.

What is the most important page on a website?

Usually the one that matches what people search for, which is often a service page rather than the homepage. Check your analytics for where people actually land, because it is frequently not where you assume.

How many pages should a small business website have?

Enough that each thing you genuinely want to be found for has its own real page, and no more. For most small businesses that is somewhere between five and fifteen.

Does website design affect Google rankings?

Not directly. Speed, mobile behaviour and accessibility do affect rankings, and design affects whether people stay and act once they arrive, which matters commercially even where it is not a ranking factor.