A business website cannot become successful solely because of a compelling interface or thought provoking content. Your website needs to feed your users with great user experience and functionality, and above all be easy to understand at first sight.
Like the saying goes, beauty lies in the hands of the mouse holder, this means your website’s beauty is judged by your website visitors. Therefore when creating a website, you should create it for your visitors not yourself, putting their preferences in mind.
A messy and disorganized website can drive away your prospective customers and at the same time seriously hurt the reputation of your business.
Creating a website these days is no more a hustle as there’s a bunch of website creation tools available, most of which are free. Whatever tool you choose to use, just keep in mind these design principles.
Here are 15 quick tips to ensure that you are headed to the right direction of creating a user-friendly and powerful website for your business or company.
Best Website Design Tips For Small Business Websites
1. Site Navigation
Plan for you site navigation. Ensure that important sections are strategically listed. It is advisable to put most important pages on the main navigation bar instead of linking them as sub-pages. Dan Veltri, the co-founder of Weebly, advises to limit your top-level navigation menu to 5 tabs with related pages organized under them in a drop down format. There must be a clear and direct way for users to come back to home page no matter what page they are landing.
2. Branding
Add memorable elements of your brand on your website e.g company logo and color scheme. The logo should be made prominent on the home page and should also appear on all other pages.
3. Home page
When people visit your website for the first time, they should be able to immediately tell what your website is about. Any Call-To-Action button such as: See Our Services, Signup for a Service, Download White paper or Buy a Product should be placed in a visually prominent area. Try to keep above the fold so users do have to scroll the page down before finding the Call-to-Action button. Each page on your website should entice or compel your users to take action.
4. Content
If your business primarily operates offline, ensure that you present clear information about your business to get potential clients call you or email you. If you trade products and services online, provide your clients with complete information so they can have the confidence to buy.
5. Add a Blog to your website
One way to draw customers to your website is by adding a blog to your website. Write blog How To’s related to your business. This improves your site SEO ranking.
6. Think About SEO
When designing your website, you should a SEO element in your mind. Visual graphics like photos may look but won’t be read by search engines. Quick Fix: Have a text that says “View Our Work” instead of an image button. Text placed over an image is not read by search engines.
7. Keep your deign simple
Do not clash colors. Use complementary colors that make your text easily readable. Using colors like red text over a blue background makes text too hard to read and visitors will leave your website. Also limit the use of fonts and animated gifs. These can distract or pull away someone’s eyes from the focus web page. Keeping your paragraphs short will also make your content and easy to read. A good paragraph should be shorter than 6 lines.
8. External links
Load external links in a new window. Your website should stay in front of the customer, even as you provide them with additional resources on external links.
9. Browser compatibility
Ensure that the website is tested and runs well across all browsers and operating systems.
10. Responsiveness
Ensure that your website is responsive and can load perfectly in all devices, most importantly be mobile friendly.
12. Make your site mobile responsive
In 2016, OuterBox, an E-commerce and web development company reported that more than 62% use their phones to make purchases online. If your website can be easily accessible on mobile devices, this means you are losing out on sales and exposure. If you plan to start any website that will succeed, you must cater for mobile users first.
13. Make it easy to find
Get a domain name that describes what your business or company is about. You can also have several domains that redirect or point to that website.
14. Place your contact information above the fold
Put your contact information in a place where people can easily find it. It is recommended that you make your contact information visible, most preferably at the top and bottom of your home page. This way, people won’t have to search for your phone number or email address if they ever want to contact you. If you use social media as well, put your social media links at the header or footer of your website.
15. Website speed
Respect the need for speed. A recent study by SOAST, a web development company, reveals that 88% of people have negative association with buggy websites.
83% of them would leave your website if its loading speed was too slow and opt for your competitor’s website if it is faster.
Ensure your website loads faster by keeping its software updated and optimizing its multimedia such as videos and images for faster downloads. It is also important to host your website with a company that can handle your bandwidth demands.
Conclusion
Without doubt, these tips will help you create an amazing website for your business. Lack of a website can make your business fall behind the competition, thereby missing the opportunity to engage and connect with your potential clients. Customers will always do research about your business before buying your products or services. If you they can’t find you online, they won’t just trust you and won’t buy.
Next Steps…
If you need a high quality eye-catching responsive website for your business or company, feel free to Contact Me.
