Today I’m excited to share with you my thoughts on how to have a successful website design. A great website will promote your business and grow your potential online.
What makes the design?
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People ask me, what is important when it comes to a website? For me, a website has three parts: Design, Layout & Function. There are two types of website owners on the internet today. Those who invest time into their websites and make it perfect and those who put a website up and never touch it every again. Your website is a virtual place to sell your products, share your message and connect with visitors. You never know what opportunities your website will lead you to! However, I will take a risk in saying that there are some who haven’t updated their website in years and unfortunately, they’re okay with it. However, your website is the door to opportunity so why waste it? My personal opinion is, a potential client will see your website and if it doesn’t stay updated and have a clean design and work properly, they will think the same of your customer experience and might go elsewhere for the service they’re in need of. You also must consider, is my website modern? Are you keeping up with the current trends? One website I visit a lot to keep myself in tune with what is a hot web trend is visiting websites such as Dribbble.
If you’re someone who is asking yourself, why is my website important? Please let me share this with you. Your website is your storefront, lead generator, connection machine and so many other words that describe it. This is something that our Nashville website design team stresses to each of our clients. We help them focus on a good design that will encourage sales for their business!
How to make content stand out
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Content is key! One area our team at Remix focuses on is content creation. We start out by learning about you, asking you questions about your company, your goals and what you want your clients to take away from the experience your website presents. Another area we focus on is your competition. This is a very important step for web designers to take. If you’re a web designer, looking at your top competition is key. We research your direct city competition and worldwide competition. We then present to you our thoughts on what we need to create to make sure you match their product. Content is more than text. Content is images, video, your professional write up on every page. Content is the experience you provide in explaining who you are!
Eye catching layout
Website layout is broken down into two areas. Resolution & Client Expectation. Studies have shown that most internet users are on a 800×600 or 1024×768 resolution. This is a huge factor in choosing resolution for your website. If you do not fit the design into either of these layouts the website design can become pixelated and distorted. Hiring an expert in website design such as our team can make sure you do not have a distorted website. Client expectation is actually a large part in layout choice for a website. If you do not keep the expectation of the viewer in mind, you could quickly lose their interest. A few ways to keep their interest is by keeping your layout clean in relation to our content and not stacking too much on top of each item. Also make sure that your layout is relevant to your topic, brand or business.
What the function?
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So far we’ve covered design, content and layout. Lastly we have Function! This might be the biggest area of your website. If your website doesn’t function well, you can be losing a lot of potential traffic! Here are some things that can be costing you visitors in potential bad functions.
Bad Navigation: Don’t scatter your navigation around the website. Try to keep it all toward the top of the website. This is where your visitors eyes will first point to.
How do you fix this? Group your navigation all in one area.
Content Structure: Make sure your content is easy to find, easy to read, easy to share. It’s been reported that 50% of sales online are lost because visitors cannot find what they’re looking for! Make sure your content is easy to find.
How do you fix this? Group your content together in easy to find areas of your website.
Audio & Video use: Most visitors enjoy having the ability to decide what content they choose to engage with. Having autoplay audio and video can cause your visitors to leave, especially if you don’t give them any control over the content playback. Allow the user to play the content if they want to.
How do you fix this? Give your website visitors the choice to play your content. If it’s engaging content, they might share it! Additionally, with mobile web use growing it is better to not have music on your website as it may not transfer well over to mobile.
Registration Requirement: You know those popup windows that appear on a website when you first land there, especially the first time? These can drive up your email list registrations but also consider that you’re causing a barrier between your viewer and the content. This may upset the viewer and cause them to leave for another website to find what they’re looking for. Email lists are fantastic and I believe in them, however, give the viewer the choice to enroll into your list under their own decision of finding the form.
How do you fix this? Put your registration form at the bottom of your blog and in that area, tell them what they’re getting out of the sign up.
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Boring Content: Data suggests that 40% of visitors who have a negative experience don’t return to that website. Try to provide a great website experience.
How do you fix this? Make your content easy to understand and helpful for the reader. Enhance the website by adding in interactive elements.
Poor Legibility: Typography choice is huge for website design! It’s actually more important than most people think. When working with our clients, we show them all the typography choices available to them and ask which one they connect with most and which one the client will connect to most as well. Sometimes, a website has bad font choices.
How do you fix this? Hiring a professional website design team such as our team based in Nashville can fix this problem. Our job is to focus in on every area of your content and make sure everything works right and flows together within the design. Contact our team today if you want to get started on a project!
Frequency: You may have built a website with great resolution, engaging content and strong typography, did you consider that having a bad frequency within your website can harm your chances of landing a sale? Try to stay away from pages that say “coming soon” and “under construction”. Also remember to keep your website updated with fresh content all the time.
How do you fix this? Keep your content relevant and fresh. This will do two things, keep your visitors coming back for you and also help you rank higher in search engines.
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Responsiveness: A responsive website means, does it respond to resolution changes between a desktop, tablet and phone? If your website isn’t programmed to automatically detect these changes in size you can lose a customer. Our team focuses on testing & mastering your website to work on every device!
How do you fix this? By hiring a professional website designer, your website will most likely be responsive and work on every device. With more time on the internet being spent on mobile, a responsive website is very key!
Thank you for reading this entry on website design. Please comment below and let us know what you thought and what you took away from this reading. Please feel free to also ask any questions you might have!
If you want to start building your strong web presence today, please contact our team and we’ll make sure you get everything you need!
