What do you think makes a great business website?

Hello,

What do you think makes a great business website?

I think that a great website should have the following:
1) Simple and clean layout
2) Exclusive content
3) Easy-to-use navigation

Best regards,
Thuva

I think the biggest thing is easy-to-use-navigation.

Everyone wants to find their info the easiest and fastest way!

what are your goals?
what type of business website?

A good reason for people to choose your site over traditional avenues. The rest is just details.

Originally Posted by lindmar

what are your goals?
what type of business website?

As above...depends on what your objectives are:

- increase awareness of your brand/company
- increase sales
- get exposure to your product line or services
- provide good customer service (parts lookup, warranty/repair information, FAQ's, shipping information etc)
- educating the customer on your product/service/industry

easy navigation is a standard whether online or offline - but the "look" of your site has to be consistent with your brand image as well...you don't see soft pastels and smooth curves on an automotive site - just like you don't see hard edges, dark colours and bold font styles on a lingerie site (unless it's a BDSM site of course )

You *obviously* need fancy 2 meg flash intros that take forever to load, gaudy pink colors and gratiutous use of the [blink] tag.

Flash is cool and all but when the entire site is made of it, I click away right away. Use minimal animation, don't clutter the site with a tonne of pictures, don't make the fonts too damned small, choose ad placement wisely, and don't ever use sounds.

It's gotta look sleek, clean, and ya gotta make it easy to navigate.

I'm almost done making up my business's website and once it's done, I'll get you guys to comment on it.