A website is a front door, a front porch, and basically every room of the house. But not all your visitors are entering through your front door. Instead, they might be coming through your windows—landing on subpages from search engines and AI search agents.
So, every corner of your site needs to be ready. Here’s how to develop a website that works for you and your users.
User Experience (UX) Over Everything
User experience (UX) is an emotional experience. When UX design goes wrong, people have immediate emotional responses: confusion, frustration, anger.
When your site accounts for UX, people also have immediate emotional responses: understanding, calmness, fulfillment.
Accessibility is User Experience
Website accessibility went from barely considered to a non-negotiable. Readable text. Clear navigation. Backend mechanics. It’s more than checking a box for compliance; it’s allowing more people in to connect with your organization.
Content Really is King
Content on your site matters more than ever. And content encompasses a lot: the words, graphics, photography, and infrastructure (We’ll get to that later.) on your site. Is your content relevant? Is it optimized for SEO and GEO (AI search)? Is it easy (and even fun) to read?
Getting great content starts way before you draft a single word or build a single page. Most of the work begins with client goals, keyword research, sitemap development, and identifying relevant topics based on your industry and audience.
Your sitemap is an outline of all the pages on your site, how they’re connected to each other, and how navigation flows.
When it comes to site development, we give priority to a few things regarding users:
- What they’re currently doing.
- What we want them to do.
- What we know they’d get the most value from.
Identify keywords and phrases that people are using. Account for both SEO and GEO, or search tied to AI. Develop a sitemap based on popular pages, topic priority, and navigation needs.
Speaking of navigation, let’s take a brief aside to answer a common question:
What’s the max number of items that should be in your main navigation?
Answer: Six. Anything more and you’ve created information overload.
As for driving action once someone visits your site:
Make sure your messaging is readable (sixth- to eighth-grade level) and conversational. Present copy in spurts instead of large paragraphs. Draft headlines and subheads that grab attention and align with keyword research. Go with clear, contextual button links instead of long text links. Let people know where they’re going and why they want to go there.
Web Content Includes Infrastructure
Everything you can’t see is just as important. The backend of your site needs to be robust for functionality, security, and longevity. If you’re not accounting for that infrastructure, you’re endangering your business and your users. A well-built site is a safe site that can perform for years. The cost to build and maintain that infrastructure will save you big in the long run.
We develop and build sites; our clients own them. We don’t throw up barricades, so clients can make updates along the way, but we’re always here for continued support. That’s not just an agency selling point; it’s another layer of accessibility and transparency.
Four Things You Need to Know About Website Development
- Navigation should be backed by data.
- Web accessibility and mobile experience should now be defaults.
- Backend infrastructure is as important as user-facing content.
- You should own your website. You paid for it; you should control it after it’s developed.
