With this checklist to the perfect website

The following questions are asked by our customers (and by us) every day on the way to the "perfect website". At first glance, these seem like obvious answers to simple questions - but unfortunately, they are all too often lost sight of in the hustle and bustle of everyday life. This checklist will help you keep your bearings:

1. does your website reflect your brand?

Design a visually appealing, content compelling, and emotionally engaging website that not only satisfies the needs of your target audience, but also plays into your brand's goals.

Use your website to convey your brand's vision, image and character. 

The basis for this is a uniform corporate design that also works for the digital application on your website, in videos or on social media. A design system for your website helps you not to lose the overview, to keep the implementation effort as low and the recognition value as high as possible.

2. is your website effective? 

A website that reflects your brand is a good start. But does it help you achieve your business goals? After all, your website is not a masterpiece that hangs on the wall of a museum to be contemplated, but a tool that helps you achieve your goals.

We all feel the same way: we have too little awareness, too little traffic, too little reach, too low conversion, too little revenue, too little impact.

In order to check the achievement of your website's goals, clear objectives must first be defined, of course, which we then transform into concrete metrics, so-called KPIs. Here's the best thing about the digital channel: you can measure everything simply and concretely. Gut feeling adé!

This is the only way to implement targeted measures that can be used to measure the success or failure of your website. This not only helps you maintain an overview and not get lost in the flood of opinions and data, but also makes the performance of your agency measurable and binding.

3. is your website fast enough?

We all feel the same way: time flies, our to-do list grows and new offers pop up faster than you can say "Basic Data Protection Regulation". The phrase "time is money" has never been truer.

Can your website keep up with the new speed and load faster than your users bounce back? (Spoiler: For every second your site takes longer to load, you lose 7% in conversion). Google and Facebook also penalize slow websites and play them less often. Using Google Lighthouse the website speed can be measured. Possible measures for better loading times are a performant CMS, clean code or an AMP version of your website.

A fast website naturally includes a user-centric structure that allows your website visitors to find the information they're looking for as quickly as possible. The "goldfish generation" with an average attention span of less than 8 seconds makes this a real challenge.

4. is your website clearly structured?

Design a simple site map and structure to encourage your website visitors to explore your website. With a clear menu, you give your website visitors a good overview of what content your website offers the reader and what they absolutely need to see.

Also consider user flow, how visitors navigate through your site and what content they look for - and find - along the way.

If your site has grown organically and this hasn't exactly improved the findability of the content, you can use analytics tools like Google Analytics or Hotjar, or rely on expert reviews and usability tests to optimize the issues of the current structure and adapt it to the needs of the users.

5. does your website invite you to stay?

Your website visitors should not only find what they are looking for on your website, but ideally also stay longer on your site?

Try Amazon's famous phrase, "You might also like this." Connect each page with teasers to related or recommended content, or to other relevant areas of your site. A tag system based on your visitors' interests will help you automate this. With marketing automation, you can even personalize such recommendations according to the user's behavior.

6. is your website exciting?

No one likes to listen to a long monologue. So make your content as short as possible and only as long as necessary.

Offer your website visitors variety in the preparation of your content. A picture is worth a thousand words, a video as much as a thousand pictures.

With interactive elements, you also give users the opportunity to take the wheel themselves and actively control their visit to your website. Ways users can interact with your website include value-added content such as interactive tools, tests, surveys, and videos.

Also consider micro-interactions as small rewards for each interaction.

7. do you treat your website visitors like normal people?

Visiting your website is like entering your store or business. Resist the temptation to rub your offer in your users' faces too early and too often, or to push them to buy with pushy advertising - "Nobody wants to be sold to, but everybody loves to buy".

Take your website visitors seriously, think about their goals, ideas and expectations, as well as the situation in which they use your website. User focus is the key to success here.

If you don't want to rely purely on your gut feeling, use workshops, user interviews, usability or A/B tests to improve the user experience of your website and at the same time your understanding of your target group.

8. has your website stopped?

A website is never finished. Keep testing, measuring and optimizing your website. Nothing is worse than stagnation. Even if your website is just new or working perfectly - this is exactly the right time to get out of your comfort zone and think about how you can optimize your business and your digital presence.

Only those who constantly develop can stay one step ahead of their competitors and technical progress.