Your online presence and digital marketing strategy depend greatly on the design of your website. A well designed website exudes authority. Your website may help you generate repeat business and encourage client loyalty by providing information that is clear, consistent, and simple to discover.
We’ll look at best practises and resources for streamlining your website design process, discuss the importance of outstanding website design, and examine examples of beautifully built business websites.
Design advice for commercial websites
These eight recommendations will assist you in creating an engaging, effective website that keeps consumers and prospects interested, whether you want to upgrade the design of your website or are just getting started.
Make a plan for the layout of your website.
The first step in developing or redesigning a website should be to create a thorough plan outlining what you want to do, how to do it, and how each website component will assist serve your clients.
Identifying your target market and creating a complete customer journey are necessary before you can move forward. Each design step is influenced by customer data, which also dictates what services your website should provide. Gather reliable information about the following for this step:
- Who are your clients?
- What they enjoy
- Which content genres they prefer, and how they changed from website visitors to paying customers
Eliminate extraneous components from your website design.
Get rid of anything clumsy and superfluous from your website because modern website design is simple, sharp, and efficient. Remove the following elements:
- Animations
- Excessively wordy copy
- Unnecessary stock images
- Promotional language and meaningless buzzwords, such as “next generation,” “robust,” and “innovation,”
Customers in today’s dynamic marketplace have limited attention spans and don’t want to search through pages of irrelevant content. Ensure that customers’ demands are met by creating a simple website that aids in problem-solving.
Design your website with social media platform buttons.
Your website should serve as the centre of a seamless online presence. Think about adding buttons to your website that connect to your social media accounts on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. If possible, put them in a footer that follows the user as they navigate between pages.
Create a scrollable homepage for your website.
A scrollable homepage increases the number of viewers who can reach your website since more people than ever are using tablets and mobile devices to access the internet.
A scrollable homepage is also cutting-edge and captivating since you can animation website elements to appear or move as the user scrolls to them. Without being overbearing or intrusive, this design provides a fascinating element.
To make it simple to navigate, section off your scrollable homepage. The section below ought to be there.
- Introduction and the About page
- overview of the services
- Products and product features
- Testimonials
- Case studies and success tales
- Resources
- Contact information
Don’t be scared to use white space while designing your website.
There’s no need to avoid empty space anymore. Make your material easier to read by giving the most important text priority in white space (or any blank space of any colour) to help break up pages. You can use white space to guide your decision-making over the placement of other page elements.
Make your website’s design mobile-friendly.
Nearly half of all web traffic worldwide, according to Statista, is mobile. Furthermore, according to Google data, 59% of smartphone users give the ability to shop via a smartphone as a top priority when selecting a brand to buy from, and 50% of mobile users will browse a company’s mobile website rather than download an app.It is obvious that companies must make their websites responsive to mobile devices. Make sure your website is mobile-responsive and displays well on mobile devices as well as desktops. Make sure your mobile sites are specifically designed to address visitor needs. Make it as simple as you can for them to access the information they’re likely seeking for and why they’re using your mobile site.
Design your website with an SEO strategy in mind.
The importance of SEO for any company’s online presence should be taken into account at every stage of developing or redesigning a website. Build your SEO strategy around the material that will be most intriguing and relevant to your target audience.
Secure the layout of your website.
The privacy of their personal information is something that customers take very seriously. Do everything in your power to reassure customers that their data is secure on your website.
A current SSL certificate is one aspect of website security. Credit card transactions, data transfers, logins, and surfing are all secured by this little data file that associates a cryptographic key with your company. The HTTPS application protocol and the padlock icon in a user’s search bar are both created by an active SSL certificate, which is why they are both required. Google will frequently mark your website as insecure and steer customers away if it doesn’t use the HTTPS application protocol.
Easy navigation is a sign of a good business website
Most visitors to your website have a specific purpose in mind, like locating an item’s pricing or getting in touch with customer service. You want to make achieving that objective for them as quick and simple as you can. Customers who are annoyed with having to browse around and search extensively on a complicated website are more likely to switch to a competitor’s website.
Responsive design is a feature of effective commercial websites.
Most visitors to your website have a specific purpose in mind, like locating an item’s pricing or getting in touch with customer service. You want to make achieving that objective for them as quick and simple as you can. Customers who are annoyed with having to browse around and search extensively on a complicated website are more likely to switch to a competitor’s website.
By modifying menu layouts, shrinking pages, and adding dropdown tabs, a mobile-optimized website delivers a pleasant viewing experience.
Make sure your website is mobile-friendly if you want to rank higher in search engine results because search engines also take mobile website layouts into account while crawling websites.
Branding is consistent on good business websites.
Consistency fosters a sense of cohesiveness and professionalism, regardless of whether you’re building a new brand image or enhancing an old one. The layout, font, and colour palette of your website should be consistent throughout. By doing this, visitors are always aware of their location and where on each page to find the information they require.
A chosen style guide will also make it quick and simple to add pages or other components to your website because you’ll have a predetermined template for how those pages should appear there.
Useful photos are used on good business websites.
Since images and videos receive greater engagement than just text alone, it might be simple to add too many of them to web sites. However, you should refrain from overstuffing your site with pointless graphics. Instead of including an image only for the sake of doing so, try to strike a balance between text and eye-catching images that serve a purpose.
After text blocks that support the information, insert images. If you’re considering using video content marketing, consider posting explainer films, how-to videos, and video testimonials in places where they may clarify specific material.
Your pictures and videos should restate your themes while also enticing viewers without being too overbearing.
Good company websites have compelling, understandable copy.
Your website text is essential since it provides customers with the information they need. Make sure your text is well-written, clear of mistakes, and engaging in the way it conveys your message. How to ensure that the copy on your website and in all other branding materials is consistent should be covered in your style guide.
Avoid being overly technical or employing excessive jargon in your copy; instead, talk to readers in words they will understand. Develop a distinct brand voice that remains constant throughout all of your marketing materials and channels. Customers should ideally be able to see right away that any material comes from your business.
Calls to action are a staple of good business websites.
Customers are directed to take a certain activity by a call to action (CTA). To increase your sales leads, you may ask them to sign up for your newsletter or blog, for instance.
Your CTA buttons ought to match your logo, be easy to read, and be striking. Use CTAs to consistently remind users to do the required action by placing them across your website.
A good business website loads pages quickly.
The speed at which your website’s pages load once a user clicks them is known as page load speed. Customer behaviour is directly impacted by page load speed: If a page takes too long to load, the user will get impatient and go for the information on an other, faster website.