What is a GOOD website?

People vary in their tastes, and this applies to websites no less than anything else. Therefore, “good” means many things to many people. Still, in many cases, most people tend to like the same things, probably because most of us live with the same general kind of human brain, and it has limits as to what it finds acceptable. Here are some ideas which make sense to me, regarding what makes a good professional website.

I see three fundamental and distinct values which can be present in a good website:

• It meets the needs of visitors.
• It supports your business.
• It’s manageable by you in the long haul.

A good website works for visitors

While too many websites seem confused about this, a good website works for its visitors by answering specific questions. For a human services professional, I think the following questions are likely to be central in the minds of your site visitors:

• Validation: Can you meet their needs? – Are you right for them, as a service provider? Can you help them with their problems? Do you really know what you’re doing? Do you have meaningful experience with their sorts of problems? A good website validates your potential value to someone looking for assistance.

• Methods: Is your way of working acceptable to them? – How will you go about helping them? What is your process, your style of working? A good website makes it possible for a visitor looking for help to comfortably imagine getting such help from you.

• Costs: are you affordable? – While not a major concern for all visitors, it will be for some. Transparency about costs is reassuring. So is having a pricing structure which is flexible and can accommodate a range of incomes. A good website works to resolve visitors’ anxieties about affordability.

• Information: Do you have real solutions for real problems? – People often are looking for solutions, and not just comforting or someone to talk to. Some of these solutions are easy to offer, immediately, on your website. Aside from the value inherent in offering such immediate help to others, doing this validates your usefulness. A good website validates your immediate usefulness.

Customers are of three sorts: prospective, current, and past. Up to a point, they all have the same needs, but beyond that you do well to address the significant differences between these three groups.

It’s critical that we realize that we cannot appeal to, much less work with, everyone. Defining who you want to work with, and focusing on serving them specifically, is one sign of a professional.

A good website works for your business

Assuming your site exists to support your human services business, to the degree that it does that it is good. However, this is overly general. It can provide a number of different sorts of support, and you do well to plan what sort of effect it should have on your business. Some possibilities:

It can advertise your business

As pure advertisement, I think websites are not a particularly good idea. A listing in a therapist referral service probably will work better, and better yet would be both, with the listing being the bait and the website the hook, to put it in fishing terms. Telephone “yellow book” listings also will probably work better.

I specifically think that assuming that search engines will drive people to your website is usually a poor idea, for a number of really good reasons (for more about this, see Assuming visitors will magically find your site).

A good website supports your business

This can happen in several ways, and the effect won’t always be immediate. An essential function can be to provide information about the value you offer to prospective clients. It can also do the same for current clients, with the effect that they may well chose to use more of your good services than might otherwise be the case.

The website can induce a prospective client to make that all-important phone call – immediately or eventually, but this will happen only if the value you offer is made clear and accessible to the site visitor.

It can increase the volume or quality of your business

A specific effect desired by many HSPs is an increase in the number of their customers. Not often enough considered is the question of the quality of clients you serve. Good quality clients are likely to be more satisfied, and engage you better and longer. Driving such clients to your business is an excellent objective, and a quality website can certainly help achieve this.

It can increase the financial productivity of your business

I mentions this last because I personally consider it the least interesting, although many HSPs may disagree. Nevertheless, this is certainly a legitimate objective for a website, and it’s also a highly measurable outcome.

A good website is manageable by you

A critical issue, as you’ll discover, is how easily you can access your website – to edit, update, and prune it. In other words, you should expect to have an enduring relationship with your site, and you will want it to be a workable relationship.

This is largely a technical question. The principal issue is ease of access, because if it isn’t easy enough, your website will not be updated, and thus will die. You have two options: you can do it yourself (if you know how) or you can access your site through other people, which is what most people do. One solution takes time, and the other money. Either way can work.

Good management design up front is critical. There are a number of solutions the problem of ongoing website access. None are a free ride. Comparison shopping, as it were, is absolutely called for. Unfortunately, this is usually beyond the skill of most HSPs. It might therefore be a good investment to pay for a consultant on this specific issue, so that you can make an informed decision. This person should NOT be the person who will also be providing any service you might eventually decide you need.