Today, building a website is as easy as 1,2,3 and that’s great. But just because your website is live, doesn’t mean its design is optimized.
Web design matters a great deal and here is why: When people land on a website, it takes them only 0.05 seconds to decide whether they like it or not, whether they’ll continue browsing or leave. In fact, nearly 40% of users say they will stop engaging with a website that looks unattractive and nearly 90% of them will probably never return to the site again.
Website design also affects credibility, conversions and, in turn, sales and the overall success of your business. Well-designed sites provide great user experience, keeping visitors coming back and converting.
So, how’s your website doing?
If you’re ready to make some improvements, these 6 tips and best practices will help you improve your website’s performance.
1. Choose a Color Scheme That Matches Your Brand
The colors you choose for your site are much more important than you might think. Studies have shown that colors can increase brand recognition by almost 80%!
The best way to choose your color scheme is with branding. Start with your logo. Designing the right logo is a crucial part of any branding process. Have in mind that your logo will be everywhere: your website, product labels, product catalog, and even your storefront. A well-designed logo is a great way to tell customers that your business is professional and trustworthy.
Fortunately, creating an awesome logo is easier than ever. You don’t have to hire an expensive professional logo designer – all you need to do is use a free logo maker. When designing your website, think about whether the colors match your logo and your brand image. It’s very important to keep things consistent in order to avoid confusion.
2. Simplify Your Navigation
Make sure that website visitors can find what they are looking for quickly and easily.
The best way to figure out how you can make things smoother for your visitors, think about why they come to your site. Are they looking for information? Checking your offering? Whatever the reason, if it takes them ages to find what they’re looking for, they will leave and go to your competitors.
Now, when it comes to navigation, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel – just stick with things that you know work. For instance, the main navigation menu is positioned at the top of the page on nearly 90% of sites. So, if your menu is positioned elsewhere, users will most likely get confused.
Also, make sure to offer as few options in the menu as possible to make the design super-clean. This will prevent confusion and make it easier for visitors to make a decision.
3. Avoid Too Much Text & Use More Visuals
Avoid filling your pages with too much text. Your landing pages and homepage should have minimal text. You probably have a lot to say about your brand and your products but you’ll have to find a way to say it in just a few sentences.
Also, make sure to use lots of visuals. Besides helping break up large blocks of text, visuals also provide a more effective explanation. Just think about it – why should you write long, detailed descriptions for your visitors when you can show them? People are visual creatures, so a good image or video will help them understand your message faster and easier.
4. Make Your CTA Obvious
Did you know that less than 50% of websites have a call-to-action button that can be noticed in less than 3 seconds? Moreover, about 70% of businesses don’t have a call-to-action on their interior pages. That’s not good, because you can’t drive conversions without an effective call-to-action button.
Your calls-to-action must be easy to notice, so don’t be afraid to make them big and bold!
5. Make SEO a Priority
Everything on your website needs to be optimized for SEO and here’s why – Nearly 95% of all online experiences begin with search engines. Not focusing on SEO puts you at a disadvantage to your competitors.
But when SEO is more than just adding keywords to your blog posts. Design-wise, when you are designing your site, ensure that the architecture has a logical hierarchy. You should also take a look at your on-site optimization, i.e. on-page elements.
Make sure to create an XML sitemap to make it easier for search engine bots to analyze your website content. An XML sitemap will show the crawlers the location of pages, when the pages were last updated, updating frequency, etc. In addition, a sitemap will show search engines that there’s no duplicate content, which can be very harmful to your rankings.
Sometimes, SEO might seem daunting as it requires lots of time and patience. Fortunately, there’s a great number of SEO tools on the market that can help make the whole process easier.
6. Optimize for Mobile
Research has shown that 80% of the top sites are optimized for mobile. This is because browsing on mobile devices has become the new normal. Mobile traffic has already surpassed desktop and this trend keeps rising.
What’s more, nearly 60% of people say they wouldn’t recommend a brand that has a poorly-designed mobile site and almost 95% of people judge a site based on its responsive design.
A mobile-friendly site is not only important for the UX, but it’s also crucial for search engine optimization. Search engines reward mobile-friendly sites by ranking them higher. For instance, Google knows that nearly 90% of smartphone owners search the Internet using their mobile devices, so about 70% of the results on the first page are optimized for mobile.
Final Words
Obviously, your website design will ultimately impact whether your website (and your business) is a success or not. The good news is, any site can be improved. Use these 6 tips as a guideline to help you get started with those improvements.
