In today’s digital age, having a website is essential to owning a business. While the efficiency of online sales varies depending on the industry, a lot of companies rely on it. Plus, many more enjoy a healthy mix of online and offline sales.
The benefits of having a website are too good to ignore. A well-designed website is cost-efficient for drawing in customers and boosting sales.
The thing is: Creating a good website can be difficult. It needs to be both appealing and easy to navigate simultaneously. And for many business owners, new and experienced alike, this is quite the challenge to take on.
What Makes a Good Website Design?
A fantastic first impression is the difference between acquiring a loyal customer and not.
High-quality web design ensures a great first impression, enhances user experience, and solidifies your company’s branding. It also positively influences ranking in Search Engines such as Google. You can create your business website yourself, you just need to follow some specific rules. Let’s explore the do’s and don’t for designing your website.
The Do’s of Website Design
Even if web design is challenging by itself, there are some things you can do to improve your website’s quality. For instance, you can:
- Use high-quality images: Remember what we said about first impressions? Well, images play a critical role in ensuring a great first impression.
- Keep your layout simple: A simple and consistent format keeps your company’s identity in check. This makes your website clearer, more professional, and easier to organize.
- Track your website’s speed: A website shouldn’t take longer than 3 seconds to load. Any longer than that, and you risk losing potential clients. A simple layout will also decrease loading times and increase website speed and customer satisfaction.
- Make it easy to navigate: Your customers should not struggle to navigate your website. They should naturally find the information they need without frustration.
Those are the do’s of website design. Now let’s look at the don’ts.
The Don’ts of Website Design
Just like you can improve your website’s design for a better experience, you can also worsen it. That’s why we recommend you avoid these poor web design habits and follow these suggestions:
- Don’t use the wrong images: Images are, in a way, the face of your website. You want to ensure you are using high-quality images relevant to your company. You will look unprofessional if you don’t. Remember, images can also influence loading speeds, so opt for a balance between quality and weight.
- Don’t forget to optimize your website for mobile users: Mobile sales will surpass $500 billion in 2023. More than 80% of the total world population owns a smartphone. And around 67% of mobile users complain that websites are not optimized for phones.
- Don’t overwhelm the user: Once again, first impressions are a factor. Overwhelming your users with a lot of information or a cluttered layout is an easy way to scare customers away.
- Don’t use a font or color scheme that is hard to read: We mentioned clarity before. Using a hard-to-read font or a color that makes navigating harder can critically affect your website’s clarity. Once again, this links to the user’s first impression and how they navigate the website.
These tips will ensure that your website is good enough. But what if you want more than that?
Ensure Quality and Efficiency with Professional Help
Designing a website yourself is a lot of work. Most businesses and professionals today have their websites made by web design experts or they utilize an AI website builder to help create their vision.
Thanks to the explosion of eCommerce over the last couple of years, you can now find plenty of services dedicated to website design. Look for a company that specializes in web design for startups.
Hiring a professional service ensures that website quality and efficiency standards are met, directly influencing your website’s performance, retention rate, and the most essential element of success: sales.