A website is a sum of the various functions that it brings together on a single platform. It’s important to understand that website visitors will love a visually appealing design, but they will appreciate a highly functional design more than anything else. So, the focus should always be on the functional components that will be useful and which can ensure website success.

There are a few ‘must haves’ that can really make or break your website design. Let’s take a look at some of them. These haven’t been picked randomly and have not been given in any order of importance.

Well Thought Out Website Forms

Every website has forms and yours will have them too. Now, the question is whether you are going to use simple forms whose sole purpose will be to enable your customers to sort out any problems they might be having with your products or services; or they might be used to put in a query about your products and services – but nothing else. Otherwise, you could think about implementing intuitive website forms, which do all this and more. Such forms can help you initiate a far more personal interaction with your website visitors, which helps you improve customer service. The idea behind using such forms is helping open engaging channels of conversation between you and your customers and vice versa, to build a reliable and mutually beneficial working relationship. This is one way that you can ensure website success.

Social Media Integration

Social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn etc. have left their mark everywhere, in all spheres of the online world and also contribute towards ensuring website success. How? By integrating Twitter Feeds and Facebook activity streams in your website, you are making it more engaging. Like it or not, these days, your website has become a means of initiating a conversation between you and your target audience. So, offsite conversations happening on your social media networks can be integrated with the exchanges taking place on your website, improving the overall engagement quotient of your website. Another related component of your social media integration are Facebook, Twitter and Google+ buttons that can be placed on the web page to enable visitors to share content that they like, by clicking the buttons. The content can be immediately shared with their followers on Twitter, Facebook and Google plus.

Viewable Photo galleries

Can something as ordinary as a photo gallery determine web design success? It definitely can, more so, because most websites don’t have a decent photo gallery. They get the visuals of the website spot on, but falter when it comes to choosing photo gallery. Let’s face it; using Java based photo galleries is no longer a worthwhile option, because it might not show up well if the website is accessed through a smartphone. More importantly, the photo gallery must be such that it is aligned with user requirements. So, a user might want a full page view of the photo gallery or might want to view one photo at a time. The idea is to put in place the kind of photo gallery that can keep the user on your site for a longer period of time.

These are by no means all the functions that you absolutely must implement in your website design. More often than not, the purpose and objectives of the website also determine its functions. The choice of functions must be a product of brainstorming and comprehensively charting out the direction of the website and its quantifiable goals. This ensures that the combined usability of the functions goes a long way in ensuring website success.