Any smart business owner today understands the importance of having a website. It’s nearly impossible for a business to get by anymore without one. However, any old website won’t cut it.
For something so critical to your business’s success, you need to put time and effort into making your site into something great. If you’re not a design-oriented person, you might not realize just how much of an impact web design has on users.
What makes a site design “good” might seem like it comes down to personal preference, but the elements that actually do make people consider a website to be well designed are actually widely agreed upon.
There are numerous components that are almost guaranteed to give you a more effective website design. Check out the list below to give your business’s online presence the visibility boost it needs to succeed.
1. Mobile-Friendliness
It’s been a few years already since the way a website looks on a desktop was the only thing to take into consideration. Creating a website that’s only intended to be viewed on a desktop caters to just a small percentage of your audience and leaves the majority of people struggling on mobile devices.
Well over half of all web traffic is coming from mobile devices, so if anything, you will want to appeal to mobile users even more. Even Google is making the change to mobile-first indexing. Daniel Foley, SEO Manager at Considered Content, reiterated our point in stating “All websites today should be mobile-friendly as well as the old desktop view. There will unquestionably be a large number of your website visitors appearing from smartphones.”
Viewing a website on a mobile device when it wasn’t intended for it can be extremely frustrating. Having a mobile-friendly website isn’t as hard as it may sound, so there’s no reason not to make this change. Kris Jones, owner of ReeferLocal.com and Special Guest App suggests that “mobile first indexing and user preference must dictate a reasonable investment in having a mobile-friendly website.”
Many WordPress and other platform’s themes now come with a responsive web design, so it doesn’t require much extra work to ensure that your website looks great from any device. Regardless of the size of the device, your website will responsively adjust automatically to look right for that device’s screen size.
2. Speedy Load Time
A fast loading time is one of the most important elements of a successful website, and web design plays a huge role in this. A beautiful website isn’t nearly as effective as you think it is if its design is slowing down the time it takes to load.
Thanks to technology, we’ve gotten accustomed to getting information as soon as we want it. If it takes even three seconds for your site to load, you could end up losing almost half of your visitors.
Not investing as much as you can to have a fast-loading website is a huge mistake. For websites that aren’t loading as fast as they should, there are multiple issues that can be causing the problem.
Many of the choices you make when designing a website will impact how quickly it can load, which is why it’s so important to have a designer who knows what they’re doing to assist in creating it.
3. Obvious Purpose
Sometimes, you might feel like a website’s look doesn’t really reflect the site’s purpose. YY Lee, founder and web developer at Zoewebs Sdn Bhd, told us that it’s important to “design with purpose”.
If your website design is a success, users should get a good feel of what your company is about just by looking at the website. Users shouldn’t have to spend a long while on your website struggling to understand what you’re offering.
What do you aim to achieve with your website? A question that must be answered.
Is your main goal to provide information or make sales through your website? Maybe you want everyone who visits your site to enjoy some type of entertaining content.
Some industries might have more flexibility when it comes to web design and a website’s purpose, but you can always find something that works best to represent your company’s mission and goals.
4. Navigation
You don’t make a website so that users can spend all of their time on your homepage. However, if you don’t have clear navigation on your website, users might not get any further than this.
Milosz with ChilliFruit agreed that good navigation will keep users on your site longer. “If they’re not able to find their way around your site quickly and easily, they will, in all likelihood, just give up and go elsewhere. Always monitor your site to make sure that there are no glitches and that the navigation is fluid and laid out in a common-sense way.”
Any well-designed website makes it easy for users to navigate their way through it. Your website might be loaded with great content that pulls users in, but they’ll never know if your navigation is bad.
When it comes to good navigation, you want it to be as simple as possible so there’s no risk of any users getting stumped by it. Stick to the basics for structuring your site’s navigation, like going horizontally across the top, or a hamburger menu in the top left corner on mobile devices.
Good navigation shouldn’t just be present on your website through a menu, but also through the content itself. Including relevant internal links within a piece of content gives users easy access to more great information.
5. Visual Hierarchy
Do you know what information on your website is most important to users? Unless you know this, your web design could be failing you.
If you’ve made your site’s content a priority, you can be sure that all of it provides some importance to users, but it’s not all equal. How you choose to design your website is going to affect how people read your pages. You have more control than you think you might when it comes to what catches a user’s eye, so you want to use that.
The most important content on the page should be the most visible. Figure out what information is most important for users to know, and start taking steps that ensure it will get their attention right away. Highlight important content by making simple design choices such as font size, highlighted text, and graphics.
Even where you place information on a page can help make it more impactful.
6. Branding
Your website is yours. You use it to represent your business how you want, so branding needs to be noticeable. Your website might have all the characteristics of a stunning, well-made website, but it doesn’t mean much if users leave not remembering a thing about you or your company.
When you’ve done everything right and have a high-quality website, you want users to remember your name. Users should leave having a visual representation of the brand.
Branding is important for businesses to get right anytime they’re in front of an audience. Not only do you want your name clearly visible on your site, but your logo and mission should be apparent, as well. Your brand colors also give you an easy way of incorporating a color scheme throughout your website that appeals to your target audience.
7. Simplicity
Web design might be incredibly important, but that doesn’t mean it’s the only thing that’s important to web users.
A good website should be filled with valuable content that attracts interested users. If your website is earning its audience from a flashy design alone, users could end up focusing less on the important content. Good web design draws a user’s attention to the content that helps turn them into leads and customers.
Simplistic web design is often the best way to go, although it can be harder to get right. It’s important to remember that simple doesn’t equate to boring.
A talented designer can help you achieve what you want aesthetically for your website, without making it overwhelming. You can create unique, impactful web designs that don’t take away from the content by being conscious of your design choices.
Some things to keep in mind include readable fonts, embracing white space, and not going overboard with color.
Rock Your Website’s Design
Web design goes far beyond what you think simply looks good. To succeed at designing a website, you need to have a great understanding of what users are looking for as well as how web design can sway their thoughts and actions.
Learn what type of web design has the most impact on users or work with an experienced design company to take your website that extra mile. Find a partner who you think you can work well with and that will take all the information you have on your target audience and can tie it into your website.