What makes a good website?

Old Coastie

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I am going to be working with a group of college students who will design a business web site for me as their senior project.
Since I do not know how much I don’t know, I need some specific suggestions as to what makes a good website.
What is useless and unnecessary? What makes presenting and selling cleaning service effective? What did you do and what changes would you make?
 
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Andy

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The geeks designing it will have in mind what appeals to them. You need to have in mind what will appeal to the demographic of your potential customers. Keep in mind basic principles of marketing in the process.
 

Trip Moses

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So much.
But briefly, content needs to match keyword searches. Page descriptions need to match keyword searches. Image descriptions should match keyword searches.
Mobile Friendly.
Backlinks.
Updated content on a regular basis
That’s just scratching the surface.
 
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FredC

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Visually appealing to the largest possible audience.

Most important info above the fold.

Secondary info noticeable in a quick scroll.

Multiple contact methods quickly accessible from anywhere.


What are the questions your customers ask other than price? Address those in the “beginning “ of the site not some hidden FAQ

It doesn’t have to be a bullet point list....it can be incorporated into an intro paragraph or shown via pics
 

Old Coastie

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Fred, would you be open to a call at some point? You live in the Atlanta area and that is where we’d meet (I hope this Saturday).
 

FredC

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Fred, would you be open to a call at some point? You live in the Atlanta area and that is where we’d meet (I hope this Saturday).


Sorry. I'm in SC thorough the weekend.

87903


I’m also antisocial and don’t meet with folks😀

you Can always email me questions though
 

Desk Jockey

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Phone number top and bottom. Don't make someone search for your number. Make it clickable since most viewing will be on their phones.

  1. Who are you? People need to know about whom they are dealing with. "About You" should explain that.
  2. What do you do? Each service should get a page.
  3. Use stock images of those services. If you feel the need to show your work, have a gallery.
  4. Videos of each service. It doesn't have to be fancy but make sure those in it are clean cut, uniform or new clothing. Write the text so the kids have an idea what you're wanting. Let one of them do the voice over or pay a service like fiver.
Do you have a logo? Company colors? If not that's an excellent opportunity to start there.
 
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Desk Jockey

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Is that really necessary? What if you have limited content for each service?
Nothing is necessary. I think it looks better when you can link to pages than just text on the page. So if he makes a Facebook post at the bottom he can link to the service not just his website. The same with Google My Business.

Not necessary but if the kids are doing it for him, why not?

In the case of limited content I'd develop more text, images, diagrams. Most people are going to decide whether to click your number or not based upon the impression they get from your page. I'd make the effort to win them over now. Especially when its not costing him.
 

FredC

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Nothing is necessary. I think it looks better when you can link to pages than just text on the page. So if he makes a Facebook post at the bottom he can link to the service not just his website. The same with Google My Business.

Not necessary but if the kids are doing it for him, why not?
That doesn't require a page for each.

for example Mike's SC site is only two pages and using named anchors I can link to any specific portion of the site:

 
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Desk Jockey

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That doesn't require a page for each.

for example Mike's SC site is only two pages and using named anchors I can link to any specific portion of the site:


That doesn't look terrible. 😉

Seriously, can I copy the link for each service and just that service show?
 

FredC

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That doesn't look terrible. 😉

Seriously, can I copy the link for each service and just that service show?
scroll down that page and you will notice the url changes to include that anchor.............so yes you can link to each one


The home page for example has the about us and contact

Each one linkable

https://santacruzclean.com/#about-us

https://santacruzclean.com/#contact-us


but not "just" that section........your customers can also see others you provide without extra navigation
 
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FredC

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I'm not saying anyone should do it that way. That is just the way I did that site and don't see it as a negative when done properly


edit: there are some "issues" like separate meta descriptions and recognized "pages" but it doesn't seem to cause any real world problems
 
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The Great Oz

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Good advice already.

Staying out of the nuts and bolts:
#1 - It has to be found. Someone(s) on the project has to become the SEO expert.
#2 - It has to look good in both mobile and desktop screens. Use large pictures and not much text to convey a feeling of competence.
The best site I've seen scrolls a long single page of text for mobile, and uses the rest of the screen real estate on a desktop for pretty.
#3 - The tone has to make you and your company come across as likeable. See feelings again. The kids better have an English major as a team member, and that person needs to learn your preferred style.

Make sure the team is mixed gender, and they listen to what the girls like. The girls are naturally tied into your audience.

The "tech" side is what the kids will know - the mechanics of building the site. If you want to be able to have anyone fix it in the future, you might want them to build using WordPress. Custom-from-scratch websites get dumped and rewritten from scratch when you change web masters. If you care about that.

You have a unique opportunity to teach this group the reality of working with a customer, and to broaden their idea of what constitutes a good "tech" team.

Good luck!
 

Hoody

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Using what Fred mentioned with the anchors. Each service doesn't need a page like mentioned. In fact unless you're going to do adwords and drive traffic to each of those pages then there is no point in creating individual service pages. Create what we call "power pages". More content on one page is better than little content on many pages. We like to organize them by Google category. For instance Carpet Cleaning Service would get carpet, upholstery, tile, rugs, drapery, pet odor removal, mattress cleaning, and carpet/fabric protector information put on it if you offered all those services. If you offer air duct cleaning, create a separate page as there is a Google category for it. On the power pages, use the anchors like Fred mentioned and have the content scroll down to that section. Same for water damage and fire damage, asbestos etc. Then you can create supporting pages for those parent pages if you want.

For instance, for water damage you could have a page created with different types of water damage and talk about basement floods, pipe bursts, dishwasher back up, hot water heater breaks, sewage etc. You URL would look something like yourwebsite dot com/water-damage-restoration/10-types-of-water damage/ which gives you a keyword rich URL.

A carpet cleaning example would be if you wanted to get into the process of pet urine removal you could create a video, as well as take screenshots from the video and write out the process below the video. Then make that page a child of your Carpet Cleaning Service page so your URL would be something like yourwebsite dot com/carpet-cleaning-service/removing-pet-odor-from-carpet/

Here is an example of creating a power page https://spotfreefloorcare.com/ He had another website before, many other metrics were already in place. We redesigned his website, got rid of all of the unneeded service pages and did 301 redirects to the power page, and added a few other navigational things in place and in 2 days from the new launch he jumped to #3 in the maps from being second from the bottom. He also jumped from page 3 to bottom of page 1 organically. He's done some email marketing and part of his retention program is to have people book online so he's driving traffic organically and now he's #2 organically just under Yelp. He is also #1 in maps as well in his city. His city isn't incredibly competitive but small considerations and tweaks like those can make a big difference. We've done no other work besides the redesign so it just reinforces that site structure is incredibly important.
 

Hoody

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The SEO capabilities are worthless, then when you want to actually rank your site or pay someone for SEO theyll have to completely redo it

I'm shooting myself in the foot with this but - Why do you think the SEO capabilities are worthless? If that site isn't functional and doesn't have some good conversation elements then I can see that argument. I've been impressed with a few DIY Wix users. You're able to insert custom code like Google Tag Manager and set up all your tracking codes within there. Some people just do a bad job at DIY and the amount of time a company would have to take to get it right would be nearly the same as using their cookie cutter framework and customizing it. We work with DIY'ers all the time and am just honest about it. If the website has a great layout we'll work with it and do a few small tweaks if needed. If I look at it and determine we're going to have to start with a blank slate and re-do the layout it makes more sense for us to use our system. We've ranked Wix websites and they're not worth 425 million for nothing. The major downside is you don't own the website with them besides your domain and if you want to go away then your website goes away as well.
 

Desk Jockey

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Using what Fred mentioned with the anchors. Each service doesn't need a page like mentioned. In fact unless you're going to do adwords and drive traffic to each of those pages then there is no point in creating individual service pages. Create what we call "power pages". More content on one page is better than little content on many pages. We like to organize them by Google category. For instance Carpet Cleaning Service would get carpet, upholstery, tile, rugs, drapery, pet odor removal, mattress cleaning, and carpet/fabric protector information put on it if you offered all those services. If you offer air duct cleaning, create a separate page as there is a Google category for it. On the power pages, use the anchors like Fred mentioned and have the content scroll down to that section. Same for water damage and fire damage, asbestos etc. Then you can create supporting pages for those parent pages if you want.

For instance, for water damage you could have a page created with different types of water damage and talk about basement floods, pipe bursts, dishwasher back up, hot water heater breaks, sewage etc. You URL would look something like yourwebsite dot com/water-damage-restoration/10-types-of-water damage/ which gives you a keyword rich URL.

A carpet cleaning example would be if you wanted to get into the process of pet urine removal you could create a video, as well as take screenshots from the video and write out the process below the video. Then make that page a child of your Carpet Cleaning Service page so your URL would be something like yourwebsite dot com/carpet-cleaning-service/removing-pet-odor-from-carpet/

Here is an example of creating a power page https://spotfreefloorcare.com/ He had another website before, many other metrics were already in place. We redesigned his website, got rid of all of the unneeded service pages and did 301 redirects to the power page, and added a few other navigational things in place and in 2 days from the new launch he jumped to #3 in the maps from being second from the bottom. He also jumped from page 3 to bottom of page 1 organically. He's done some email marketing and part of his retention program is to have people book online so he's driving traffic organically and now he's #2 organically just under Yelp. He is also #1 in maps as well in his city. His city isn't incredibly competitive but small considerations and tweaks like those can make a big difference. We've done no other work besides the redesign so it just reinforces that site structure is incredibly important.
Looks great! Nice work Hoody. 😎
 

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