Key ingredients of a good website

It is an all too common comment. Friends, business associates calling/writing to you and telling you that you have a good website, but, what are key ingredients of a good website ?

The definitions are varied and differ by individuals that you ask this question to. Some would say that well designed is well built, some will say that content is king, for some, usability is of utmost importance and of course others will say that it needs to be engaging and should have the glue to keep holding your customers and prospects. For me, defining what you want to achieve from the website would be the first step to solve this puzzle. Aiming too high or too low, both will have its own problems.

For a software product company,here are what i feel, are key ingredients of a good website
1) Engaging content with clear business value for defined categories of target consumers for the defined inward links (or home page)
2) An easy C2A (Call to Action) with minimal commitment. This will ensure that your subscriber lists swells in size and feeds into your opportunities pipe. Examples could be free downloads, free tour, trial version etc.
3) An opportunity to get into the details for the detail oriented persons (these should be sidelinks and the FAB(feature/advantage/benefit) statements should not occupy too much real estate in the premium pages (inward links or home page)
4) An easy understanding of how purchase can be made, and what does it commercially involve. Getting involved with a sales guy for every transaction can put off most visitors
5) High level of sales enablement maturity with detailed documents like data sheets, technical manuals, white papers, tips n tricks and a mature FAQ in place

With all this in, your website is ready as an infrastructure that can engage with your potential clients, the next thing you need to focus on is to drive that traffic into your website.. more later.

All the best. welcome comments and feedback Ways you can ensure that marketing is supporting the Sales Process
Atul