A website is a primary user interface for net enabled business (Straub et al.2001), information provision and promotional activities (Alba et al 1997). Developing sites that are responsive to user needs is critical for all site designers and managers (Price 1997) hence it is important to consider usability and other criteria for the website’s success and user satisfaction (Pearrow 2000).
When a business creates a website, its main role is to communicate its brand to its target market, while for the consumer the website is a means for them to solve their problems and somehow learn more about what is offered . According to Palmer (2002) the important elements to consider when designing a website are interactivity (usability), navigation, information content and download delay.

ESSENTIAL FACTORS WHEN DESIGNING A WEB SITE.

Download delay: If the web page is easy to download then the user will spend more time on the site and also visit it frequently. Today, there are still many people who do not have high speed internet, so having an overloaded web site makes it hard for the people with the slow internet to download pages of the site. Web site designers need to consider the time it takes to download a page from the site could either encourage people to visit the site more and more or discourage them from visiting it. Mark Zuckerberg realized this and decided to launch Facebook lite for people with slower internet speeds.

Information Content: The reason people visit web sites is to search for information on products or services they want or need, to get to know more about the company or organization or any other information which might be relevant for different reasons. If that information is available on the site, this can encourage consumers to continue browsing the site. Therefore, the home page has to be the selling factor when it comes to providing information so that the consumer can have a valid reason to continue browsing the other pages of the site. Retail stores like next do apply such on the their websites as a means of not only pushing users to view their products but also to go further like making a purchase.

Navigation: Navigating through a website should be quick and easy for the user. Factors like the colours, the design templates, information on the pages when simplified but also beautified, attract the user and entices them to want to discover more about the website. A good example of such a site that is easy to navigate is Amazon.
Interactivity: This is involves updating the website frequently so as to keep the customers interested because new information keeps users updated and encourages them to come back to the website as often as possible. News sites likeTimes news update information on their websites daily. The more frequently the information is updated on the website the more the search engines are able to pick them and make the website appear among the first results when one searches online.

Free resources
During the last decade many websites have been created and the urge for the general public to want to create their own websites has grown so much that many companies are offering tools to create their good websites and how to maintain them. Some of free resources are Google analytics; which monitor websites, give reports and automatically alerts the web owner of significant changes in data pattern. Web Templates is another tool used to separate content from presentation in web design, and for mass-production of web documents. Nowadays web templates and Google analytics can be downloaded from the internet and once downloaded, it can be used to set up the web site and monitor it. Most of these resources are provided by Google and all one has to have is a Google e-mail account to be able to use it. For one to set the free resources on the web sites, tutorials on Youtube that teach them on how to install them could be of help.

How to move forward
It is important to properly design web sites not only to attract users, but mainly to keep it as interesting and easy to navigate through. For as previously mentioned it is important to keep the website simple for less is almost best than more (You tube 2010). Web sites help to keep on track with the unending changes in technology and associate them to the consumer market. Organizations need to adapt this new technique of communicating to its target market as internet marketing is fast dominating the commercial world these days. Today’s young generation is always on the move and is hungry for information. They use their smart phones to search for information on the web, but most of the smart phones do not provide high speed internet hence limited access to most websites. This is because the organizations that manage those sites have not made them compatible with the smart phones.
Mobile phone companies and internet providers should be able to come up with soft wares that enable a mobile phone user to transact online with their credit card because it is still not safe and this would make it more convenient because one would not have to go to their PC to buy goods from sites such as Amazon.

WHAT MAKES A GOOD WEBSITE?



References
Alba, J., J. Lynch, B.Weitz, C. Janiszewski, R. Lutz, A. Sawyer, S.Wood (1997) Interactive home shopping: Consumer, retailer and manufacturer incentives to participate in electronic markets Journal of Marketing 61 (3) 38-53

Jarvenpaa, S., P. Todd. (1997). Consumer reactions to electronic shopping on the World Wide Web. Internal Journal of Electronic Commerce 1 (2) 59-88

Pearrow, M. (2000) Web site usability. Charles River Media, Rockland, MA

Schubert, P. Selz, D. (1998) Web Assessment: A model for the Evaluation and the Assessment of Successful Electronic Commerce Applications Proc 31st Hawaii internal. Conference Systems Science, Hawaii

Shneiderman, B. (1998) Designing the user interface: Strategies for effective Human-computer interaction. Addision-wesley, reading, MA

You tube (2010) What Makes Makes Good Web Design? [online] available from [1 April 2010]