In the world of digital marketing where everything is just a click away and when every single brand/business has a website, it has become much more difficult to set your website apart to make an impact on the customer during their first visit to your website.
So how does one make sure that a person who visits your website will be returning?
Digital marketing is very competitive and the fact that with every passing day, there’s something for you to learn and add to your online profile/website to keep it up-to-date, makes it very difficult for business owners to design their websites accordingly.
It wouldn’t be wrong to call web design a “work of art”. There’s a lot of thought process that needs to be put into it to make sure it is just as it should be for your business. But aesthetics is not the only focus when designing a website for a business.
Sure, an aesthetically pleasing website may keep a customer on your site for a while, but it won’t help you with anything more if it does not have the relevant information that the customer is looking for.
And you need to keep in mind that websites can be confusing if they provide too much information. A balanced website that looks good and provides the reader with valuable information is what we're aiming for here.
Why is Website Design So Important?
In 2020, after COVID hit the world, any business that wanted to stay relevant made sure they had an online platform, and brands learned the importance of website designing all over again.
The sales patterns noted during the year were prominently favoring websites with a user-friendly format with a good offer for visitors. The main reasons it is important for you to make sure your website is efficiently designed is because you don’t want a customer visiting your website for the first time and then, being so turned off that they decide to click off right away, never to return again.
What Are The Most Important Elements Of A Quality Website Design?
When we talk about website design, aesthetics are usually the first thing that comes to mind. However, there’s a lot more that goes into making a website design appealing. The right information at the right place, easy to read text, and relevant offers for visiting customers, are but a few factors.
Before we go into details of what makes a website design appealing, its important to realize that it varies from business to business and person to person.
Your design must fit in line with your business and that is what will help make your website appealing.
Here are a few things that you must be mindful of when designing a website for your business to keep people on your site and scrolling through the content.
Minimalistic Design
Less is more and especially true when it comes to website design.
There was a time when people added loads of images and funky text on the screen, but those days are long gone.
A clutter-free website design will not only attract customers but also help them to easily find the information they're looking for. You can still choose to keep your website design playful and fun, just make sure the important information is above the fold.
Use The Right Hierarchy
Your website is designed to attract your potential customers to what you are offering to them. The information provided on a webpage has to be put in an order so any person can tell what is most important and what comes after.
The most common way to put weight onto something is by making the text size bigger and bolder. Hierarchy of information is vital for a business to gain attention to what's important as this could possibly get lost.
The text font also plays an important role along with the color of the text. Grabbing the visitor’s attention in the right direction is only possible if the text is prominent enough on the website.
Pop-up messages and texts can also help you gain attention quickly. However, pop-ups are still said to go unnoticed as some people instantly close them down without even noticing what’s written in them.
You can also go with using strips of text on top of the page to highlight a certain offer or mention the most important information in a grid layout to gain the attention of the visitors.
Keep the Text Easy to Read
This is something most businesses go wrong with. Using the wrong color for your text on the website in an effort to make it aesthetically pleasing can actually make it hard for your website visitors to read what's written.
Using a contrasting color is always recommended to make the text more readable. Using the right font is equally important here. A fancy font that makes it harder for the customers to read what's written will only turn potential customers away.
While a good font can be appealing, make sure you use a font that is readable for everyone.
Clear and Precise Navigation
Imagine visiting a website where you feel like you are completely lost. Where’s the menu? How do I go back to the home page? This is why you need to make sure your website’s navigation is as easy to use as possible.
Make sure you use a header with a clickable logo on every page so customers can get back to your homepage right away. Use a drop-down menu listing all your services along with a contact form, in case anyone needs additional information.
Mobile Responsiveness Is A Must
Need we say more on this? Living in an age when 99% of people actually depend on their phones for browsing and use laptops only for work, your website must be mobile-ready.
A mobile-friendly website will get you four times more customers than a fully loaded website that only works when opened on a laptop/desktop.
Most businesses have a separate version of the website for mobile phones and the full version of the website can only be opened on a laptop or desktop. To provide exceptional service, your mobile version of the website can be designed to look exactly like the desktop version.
Be sure your website is mobile-friendly since a large percentage of your target audience may be viewing it on a mobile phone. An easy-to-browse website is more likely to be visited repeatedly if the users find it convenient to access.
Designing the Best Website for Your Business
Now that we’ve talked about how to make your website more appealing, let’s see what steps are involved in designing a good website for your business. These steps are basic requirements that must be made to get the best results for their website.
Designing a website can be difficult, but it can be made easier by following these basic steps.
Set The Goal For Your Business Site
There has to be a definite goal for creating a website. What’s the purpose of your website? Do you want to get more sales? Do you need more brand recognition? Or do you just want to have an official website for your business?
The best way to determine what your goals are is by asking yourself a few questions first.
- Who is your target audience?
- What value are you going to provide to your target audience?
- What services are you going to offer?
- Who are your competitors and what do their websites look like?
Once you've answered these questions, you will have a better view of what your website needs to look like.
Understand Your Target Audience’s Expectations
You need to cater to your target audience’s expectations. Understanding the expectations of your target audience will make it easier to design your website.
This can be one of the most complicated parts of designing a website. Audiences can have changing preferences and so meeting their expectations can be challenging over time. But with each project, you can choose to target a particular group of your audience and follow the line that meets their expectations from your website.
Why is it important to keep your audience’s expectations from your website in mind? Number one, so they stay on your site once they arrive and second, so they will come back to visit because they know they will find helpful information. Once you’ve met their expectations, they will want to visit it again.
Creating Your Site’s Structure
Website design includes a lot of brainstorming and the pre-planning needs to be done strategically to set up your website for future projects.
Businesses that spend time researching before even starting on the actual design of their website have better results.
A website is a work in progress for your business with continuous updates. When you create a website without leaving room for updating it, it is like a board that cannot be erased and there’s no space for anything else that may need to be added.
You may have to create several drafts before reaching the right site structure for your website and that's perfectly fine! A good website design does not just come into form in seconds. Spend the time, do your research, and most importantly, study your competitor’s websites and learn from their mistakes.
Creating Content
Once the pre-work is done and your website’s foundations are made. You now need to start looking into what content will be useful for your target audience so that is relevant and provides good information to your website visitors.
They say “first impression is the last” and it is quite accurate when it comes to website design. The first time a customer opens up your website, they must be instantly drawn in by the content and the website layout.
To produce content, you can use third-party help and also get into influencer marketing. Good affiliate marketing can also help your website reach out to a bigger audience and serve them with content that grabs their attention.
Website content that is optimized for SEO can reach a bigger audience. Using the right keywords and creating descriptive yet SEO-friendly content is recommended by the top website content creators in the market.
Add Plenty Of Visual Content To Enhance Your Text
Long content is no longer enough to gain the attention of your website visitors. Photos and videos are now recommended to make your website more interesting and appealing for your audience.
Although the text is important, visual content aligned with that text will keep visitors on the site longer.
Business owners are implementing video marketing strategies into their websites so that the user gets all the information from a video placed into the web design.
Test Everything Before Launching
Your website content is done, and you're almost all set to launch your website but before you go ahead and give it a green signal, you need to make sure of a few things that will finalize your website and make it all set to get launched.
- Make sure your website is error-free before you launch it
- Take a test run for your website
- Get feedback from the test run and take the required actions (if any)
- If needed, take professional feedback on your website design and content to know if it is ready for people to use
Once you've tested everything, it’s time for the big launch.
Launching Your Site
You are all set to launch your website now that you have received feedback on it. Probably the most predominant feelings you're experiencing right now are excitement and nervousness.
Even though you're nervous right now, if you've followed all the crucial steps that are needed for a good website design, the chances of your website succeeding are higher than your anxiety.
When launching your website, make sure you use a reliable hosting service. Launching a website isn't the end of your website's journey, it's just the beginning!
Make it a source of valuable information for your visitors by constantly updating and improving it.
Businesses use a variety of strategies to keep their website design up-to-date. You'll be better able to create a competitive website design if you understand these strategies, so let's get started.
Web Design Strategies
There are so many design options that it can get confusing for a beginner to choose the right strategy.
With over 1.8 billion websites on the internet, how can you possibly make your website “unique”?
We will discuss the top design strategies to help a website stand out.
Use A Simple Layout
Simplicity is what seems to be the new big thing. Less is more. When it comes to customers, they are not into crowded and flashy websites anymore.
So what exactly is the “simple layout strategy”?
KEEP IT SIMPLE!
It is as simple as that. This will not only help your audience engage better with your website but also will be strategically beneficial for you as simpler website layouts are easier to maintain and can be updated in less time.
Make It Visually Appealing
An aesthetically pleasing website appeals to everyone, right? It's an approach that integrates simplicity with a lot of today's designs.
Simple aesthetic designs are preferred by businesses because they are easily manageable and can be updated as new projects are undertaken.
Regardless of the information audiences are seeking, the aesthetic strategy hopes to keep them on the website for a while. In the aesthetic strategy, the goal is to promote curiosity for exploring different sections of the website.
Websites are becoming more aesthetically pleasing than informative, but keeping a balance is key to success.
Keeping Readers Engaged
A good website engagement rate is what every brand strives for. Being honest and upfront about relevant information is at the core of the engagement strategy. The content on your website will only be engaging if it is relevant and honest.
Engaging users on the website is informative, yet it gives an honest view into what's going on. This strategy respects the user's feelings and keeps them focused on the point at hand.
Engaging customers may not always be aesthetically pleasing, but top brands use it to engage their customers. By being accessible to your customers, you can build a better relationship and have some extremely loyal customers.
Making Sure Your Site Is User-Friendly
The "functionality" of a website is important to many businesses. When visitors to your website lack technical knowledge, expecting them to interact with a high-tech website is not going to pique their interest.
You should make your website easy to use for everyone. Focus on how visitors will use your site and what steps you can take to facilitate their access to the information they need.
Create A Cohesive Brand Identity
Brand identity refers to how your brand looks and feels. A logo, color scheme, typography, etc. are all part of your branding. All platforms and touchpoints should be consistent with your brand identity. You can create a lasting impression with your target audience by developing a strong brand strategy identity.
In order for your audience to trust and believe you, it is important to create cohesion. Consistency in your brand strategy identity shows professionalism and attention to detail. Customers will be more likely to trust you if you do this.
A cohesive brand identity is created by using consistent color schemes and fonts. Color and font consistency across all platforms gives your brand a sense of unity. When people see your brand in different locations, they will also be able to recognize it easily.
Consistency is key across all touchpoints of your brand. All of your work should have the same tone, language, and style. As a result, your brand will be more easily recognized and people will be able to connect with it more deeply.
By creating brand guidelines, you can ensure cohesion. Defining how you want to use your brand is the purpose of brand guidelines. It includes things like the colors you use, fonts you use, and how your logo is used. Stick to your brand guidelines once you've created them. The branding will be more cohesive if you do this.
Common Website Design Mistakes To Avoid
As a business, it's important to have a website in order to reach out to potential customers online. However, many businesses make common mistakes that can ruin their website's design and effectiveness.
Not Having a Clear Call to Action on Your Website
Have you ever visited a website and felt completely lost? Maybe you couldn't find the navigation bar, or the content was so overwhelming that you didn't know where to begin. This feeling of confusion is often the result of not having a clear call to action on the website.
A call to action is an invitation for the user to take some kind of action, such as signing up for a newsletter or making a purchase. Without a clear call to action, users may not know what they are supposed to do on the site, leading them to click away in frustration.
So if you want people to stick around on your website, make sure you have a clear call to action that is easy to find and understand.
Poor User-Experience Design on Your Site
One of the most important aspects of any website is the user experience. This refers to how easy it is for visitors to find what they are looking for, navigate the site, and interact with the content.
A poor user experience can cause visitors to become frustrated and leave the site, resulting in lost opportunities for business. There are a number of ways to ensure that your website has a good user experience, including using easy-to-understand navigation, providing relevant and targeted content, and using clear and concise text.
By taking the time to design a well-rounded user experience, you can ensure that your website will be successful in attracting and retaining visitors.
Navigation That’s Difficult to Use on Your Website
Trying to find your way around a website should be easy and intuitive, but all too often, websites have navigation that is anything but user-friendly. In fact, bad navigation is one of the most common problems on the web.
There are a few things that can make navigation difficult to use, such as using generic labels like "home" or "contact," having too many options, or making it difficult to know where you are on the site.
While it may seem like a small thing, making sure your site's navigation is easy to use is essential for keeping visitors happy and engaged. After all, no one wants to waste their time trying to figure out how to get from point A to point B.
If you want people to stick around, make sure your site's navigation is up to snuff.
Slow Loading Times for Your Website
Your website's loading speed is important for two key reasons. First, it affects your search engine ranking. Google, in particular, has stated that site speed is a factor in their ranking algorithm.
That means if your site is slow, it could be getting pushed down in the search results, making it harder for potential customers to find you. Second, loading speed affects the user experience.
No one likes waiting around for a page to load, and if your site is slow, visitors are likely to get frustrated and go elsewhere. There are a number of ways to improve your site's loading speed, including optimizing images, using caching, and minifying code.
By taking some time to improve your site's speed, you can make sure that potential customers can easily find and use your site.
Using too many fonts and different colors on your website
As any web designer knows, choosing the right fonts and colors for your website is essential. Not only do they help to set the tone and convey your brand identity, but they also play a role in making your site more user-friendly.
However, it's important to avoid going overboard with fonts and colors. Too many different fonts can make your site look cluttered and busy, while too many colors can be distracting and overwhelming.
Instead, focus on using a limited palette of complementary fonts and colors that will give your website a clean, professional look.
Having Too Many Ads on Your Website
Too many ads on your website can be more harmful than helpful. First of all, too many ads can make your site look cluttered and unprofessional.
Secondly, if you have too many ads, people may start to tune them out and not even notice them anymore.
Finally, having too many ads can actually drive away potential customers or clients. So, if you're looking to create a successful website, it's important to strike a balance when it comes to adding ads. Just remember, less is often more.
Lack of Mobile Optimization on Your Website
In today's fast-paced world, it's more important than ever to have a mobile-optimized website. More and more people are using their phones and tablets to search the web, and if your site isn't optimized for mobile devices, you're missing out on a lot of potential traffic.
Not to mention, mobile users are more likely to be active social media users, so if you're not optimized for mobile, you're also missing out on valuable opportunities for promotion and engagement.
Luckily, there are a few easy ways to make sure your site is ready for the mobile age. First, consider using responsive design, which will automatically adjust your site's layout to fit any screen size. Second, use large fonts and buttons to make it easy for visitors to click and tap on your links.
And finally, make sure your site loads quickly on all devices by keeping your images and files sizes small. By following these simple tips, you can make sure your site is ready for the growing number of mobile users.
Fortunately, all of these issues are relatively easy to fix. By taking a look at your website through the lens of user experience design, you can make sure that your visitors have an enjoyable and easy experience while browsing your site.
And remember, always test your changes on different devices and browsers to ensure compatibility.
Is Investing In Website Design Worth It?
On the one hand, a professionally designed website can help you attract more visitors and give your business a boost. On the other hand, designing a website can be expensive and time-consuming.
Ultimately, whether or not investing in website design is worth it depends on your specific needs and goals. If you want to create a professional-looking website on a tight budget, there are plenty of do-it-yourself options available.
However, if you want a truly unique site that really stands out from the competition, working with a professional web designer is probably your best bet. Whichever route you choose, we wish you all the best in achieving your online goals.
Using The Best Web Design For Your Site
You want your website to be the best it can be. You want it to be memorable, and you want it to be something that people will enjoy coming back to time and time again. By taking the time to choose the right design for your website, you can ensure that your site will be both visually appealing and easy to use.
First, consider your audience. Who are you trying to reach with your website? What type of information are they looking for? Once you know who your target market is, you can start to narrow down your choices for web design.
If you're targeting a younger audience, for example, you might want to consider a more modern design. If you're aiming for a more corporate look, on the other hand, a more traditional design may be better suited to your needs.
Next, take a look at some of the different types of web design available. Do you want a static website or one that is constantly changing? Do you need a lot of bells and whistles, or would a simple design suffice? Once you know what kind of design you're looking for, you can start to narrow down your options even further.
Finally, don't forget about SEO (search engine optimization). As any good web designer knows, SEO is essential for getting your website noticed by potential customers.
By choosing a web design that is optimized for search engines, you can ensure that your site will show up in the results when people are searching for keywords related to your business.
By following these simple tips, you can ensure that you choose the best web design for your needs. When you take the time to find the right design, you can create a website that is both visually appealing and easy to use- two critical factors in any successful online business.
So what are you waiting for? Get started today!
