Why The Best Websites Have Two Faces
How can a website have two faces? And yet those sites that do well really are crafted with more than what many of us can just see. What is a well constructed two-faced website? And why do you need one? Let's answer those questions below.
For many of us, it's natural to focus on how a website looks. However, focusing on looks alone is arguably too limiting today. This web page page explores how to fix the problem.
Every Website Has At Least Two Faces
A website has:
- An obvious visible face that can include pictures, text, videos, audio, products to buy, downloads, etc., and ...
- Another "face", one that is not normally so obvious. If this normally "invisible" face is not sufficiently complete, a website may not perform as well as it could.
A range of extra codes can be created and inserted into web site designs to provide more information about what a website is about. The codes used build a kind of face that may seem not to be important to most people using the web in a general way. However, these "less visible" codes are important. They help both people and search engine bots better understand a website.
Making Sense Of Extra Website Codes
A wide range of different codes is available for us to include in a website. Below are three powerful examples:
Meta Descriptions
Each web page should have a meta description, ideally made up of about 160 characters of unique text that provides an accurate summary of what a web page is about.
A meta description can be picked up by search engines and used for the summaries in their search results. What you decide to put in a meta description can also help sell or persuade your potential reader that your web page is worthy of their attention.
ARIA Codes
Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) help users who may have a range of disabilities. ARIA attributes help make a website more accessible to more people. Accessible websites include well structured ARIA codes.
Microdata
Special microdata codes include various special tags that website creators can add to a website to help improve how search engines interpret and represent a website in the search results.
How Extra Codes Help
Lots of different special codes are available to meet different needs. The key message is:
- Not ignore or omit these codes.
- Use these codes whenever possible.
- Make sure the codes are inserted correctly.
- Ensure your various codes contain useful, accurate entries.
A competent web developer can ensure these codes and tags are available and used as part of your high performance website design.
How Can We Help Search Engines And Other Devices Better Understand A Website?
These extra codes may not be obvious in a visible sense. However, if a website is built carefully, the codes can be available to the growing range of devices and services that can use them.
If something seems "invisible" we can imagine it is therefore not so relevant. Yet invisible things are sometimes crucial. Consider electricity, we can't usually see electricity flowing in wires, but when under human control, the effects of harnessed electricity are amazing, essential, wonderful.
In a similar way, here's a surprise: if your "invisible" website face is performing well, the great general public can detect the differences between an average or poor performing website and one that delivers high performance results.
How so: search engines, bots, and other important detectors also focus on your website's "code face" and react to what they find.
So when your website feeds these friendly bots, your website can be better understood, and avoid or even prevent your website from getting misinterpreted.
That's why in today's highly competitive web, your website's invisible face works in combination with your website's "normal" visible face to help present a clearer impression.
On The Journey To Fix Poor Performing Websites
A website might include:
- A beautiful design (at first glance).
- Interesting, compelling text. A message that seems fine.
- Maybe several wonderful pictures.
- Perhaps videos, even audio podcasts.
- Easy ways to buy items, products, services.
What else might be missing?
Let me save you some time: I suggest, do get the fundamentals right before everything else. How: focus on four key areas BEFORE you even start web marketing, promotion, publicity.
Focus on:
- Website Performance scores (e-theme = 99/100).
- Accessibility scores (e-theme = 100/100).
- Best Practices scores (e-theme = 100/100).
- Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) scores (e-theme = 100/100).
We worked on the e-theme to achieve the near perfect the scores above. So if you ask us to build a new website or rebuild your existing website using e-theme, why can't we do the same for you too?
Handy tip: if you're not getting a Google / Lighthouse scores of at least 95 out of 100, I recommend you fix, or hire someone to fix those problems first.
Don't worry if you don't understand what Google / Lighthouse scores are, or how to measure them: we can do that for you.
In addition, to prove what I'm suggesting to you, at any time, you can verify our scores — and please let us know if you think we're slipping.
If you can't do the steps to get the scores above, then of course speak to a competent website developer experienced in those four key areas:
- SEO.
- Web accessibility.
- Best practices, and ...
- High website performance.
Then, and only then, work on your website publicity, marketing, promotion, social media, and more.
How To Get Your Website Fit For Purpose
The web never stays the same. Plus, its requirements are constantly changing.
Today, your website could benefit from:
- Good website performance and fast loading speed scores.
- Great accessibility scores.
- Website best practices.
- Search engine optimisation.
However, here's where the magic can happen. When you put those four wonderful goals above together, you have a mobile-friendly, accessible website, and your scores reach above +95, you're on the right track.
Still, when you get Google / Lighthouse scores of at least 95 for each of the above key areas, excellent: you're almost ready to start website promotion, marketing, publicity, to make your website work well.
Why Build Your Website This Way?
Here's the short "non-techy" answer. Let's use an analogy. if you were building a house, one of the first things we would do is: get the foundation right, yes? We wouldn't build our house, then later, think about whether we have a solid base.
We can adopt a similar approach to build or create a high performance website. When done with skill and delicate finesse, both the "visible" and "invisible" faces of your website are crystal clear to:
- To search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, DuckDuckGo, and more.
- To the mobile web.
- To people with sight or physical differences all around the world, and ...
- To geeks and suitably skilled technical folk who understand and care about how high performance websites are made and work.
The Key: Do The Work Right And To Do It Well
We do the work with as much detail as is required, to be informed, to complete a job well done. Sounds good, simple even, and the work feels like it's artistic more than technical. However, as you might imagine, some special work skills are needed.
If you don't have a high performance invisible website, the part of your website that is visible to most people will almost certainly:
- Underperform.
- Be slow to load.
- Be insecure.
- Run below par.
- Lack essential protection.
- Be built using low skilled "building blocks".
- Be unfit for today's demanding web.
The answer, the solution is to choose differently, think differently. Especially helpful are:
- Choosing better website builder software.
- Access to the right skills.
That's it. There is no other short-cut.
People matter. Your website construction details matter. Search engines matter too. Create a website that is easily and quickly understood by search engines, and we can help our own efforts too.
When you think about your website's visible face AND it's invisible face too, both at the same time, you're being considerate to people, search engines, bots, AI scanners, and all the other important detectors.
Yes, "users" of our websites today really are both human and software-based. We have people, bots or scanners, and even friendly artificial Intelligence "robots".
There will be more varieties interacting with our websites in the coming years. If you get your website updated now, you'll be well positioned to serve your visitors, customers, clients today, tomorrow, and beyond.
So please don't forget: your "invisible" website face really is just as important as your visible site.
Even better, getting this essential work done can be an affordable investment.
