Any modern company worth their salt has an online presence through its website. It’s key to reaching a global market and is what defines who you are in cyberspace. For example, you can market to customers in Asia even when your retail store is in Salt Lake City. With an appealing website design, you can expand your reach, increase your revenue, and establish a good position in the marketplace.
Your website, after all, is where your customers can get access to your products and services. But you need to ensure that it’s designed for better engagement and conversion.
Here are just some of the critical elements for a good web design:
Limit Colors
One of the simplest design elements that people ignore is the need to limit the colors that you choose. Certainly, you should choose tones that match your brand and palettes that aren’t bland. The right colors define the character of your website.
You shouldn’t go overboard, however, as too many colors will drown out the elements of your website and make it an eyesore. Simpler being better is a great rule of thumb to follow as you err less when you do so on the side of caution.
White Spaces
In spite of the name, white spaces aren’t necessarily colored white. The term simply refers to buffer spaces that you have on your website between any two or three elements on your website’s pages. Many people tend to cram their websites with so many elements as though real estate were limited — it’s not. Having these white spaces is not only visually more attractive than cluttered sites, it also guides the eyes of any visitor to each relevant element in turn, from a call-to-action button to a product image.
Calls-to-Action
Great website design will amount to nothing if there isn’t a potent call-to-action or calls-to-action to get visitors to do something that you want. This can be anything from downloading something on your site, filling in their contact details on forms, or even purchasing your products and services. You should place these strategically — ideally after a great selling proposition — and it should flow naturally from design. Avoid the temptation to make these too large as people tend to feel they’re being forced into something.
Clean Backend
Most people ignore the backend when talking about website design simply because you can’t readily see the backend. It does play one of the most critical roles when it comes to design as it guides action on and flow on your website. The cleaner the backend is, the smoother the experience that you offer your site’s visitors. It takes an expert designer and programmer to get this right, so make sure that you hire accordingly.
User First
Many people focus on just building a website that works well for ranking in search engines. There isn’t anything wrong with that on the surface, but it often means a poor experience for your users. SEO isn’t just a technical thing; Google, for instance, puts a lot of weight on user experience. It’s always a safe bet to focus on the user first. Usability and user experience can impact your ranking on search engines.
Your website represents your brand on the web. As such, it needs to put its best “face” forward. With an effective design, your site can turn into a marketing machine that brings in more business, online and offline.
