Top 20 Must-have Website Design Factors

1. Ideally, your site's URL should contain your most important keyword.
2. Your website should run on a content management system. Free open-source content management systems like Joomla would do a fantastic job supporting 90% of all websites, including some very complex ones.
3. The style of your website should reflect the type of business you are in (check the leading companies/organizations in your field and model your site after them)
4. Your site should be compatible with all major browsers two generations back
5. Your site needs to be highly responsive, i.e. resize and rescale itself on all major mobile phones and tablet devices
6. Page load time should be under 2-4 seconds
7. All external links should open a 'New Window'; all internal links should be set for the 'This/Same Frame'
8. All hyperlinks should have 'Titles' defined.
9. All images should have 'alt' tags describing their content.
10. Your website needs to have pleasant images and an easy-to-read typography (font) style as well as spacious and not cluttered formatting. 
11. Your contact information needs to contain your full physical address, phone number and email, and it should be easily accessible
12. Your website's navigation should be hierarchical (a tree-like structure)
13. Your website's navigation should be arranged logically, starting with the broadest category and progressing down to more specific sub-categories.
14. Your website must have a Breadcrumb element and a Site Map element
15. Your website must contain a site-wide Search element (Google search is the best option)
16. Your website needs to have a Registration form or other means of gathering users' contacts.
17. Your website needs to incorporate Social Media buttons (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn)
18. Your website needs to have a Blog with user comments
19. Your website needs to have a custom 404 error page and 301 redirect setup
20. Above all, your website should offer free and useful information for your visitors, presented in an easy-to-read format (text arranged in short paragraphs, using headers, sub-headers, bulleted lists and other web page formatting principles).

There are standard web design practices that are the norm in modern web design. However, in real life organizations often rely on opinions of individual team members who often have limited experience and lack formal training. If you'd like to discuss your website design or redesign project, call Joomla Bliss at 613.231.6308