An online presence is essential for any business today, even if you’re a brick-and-mortar store that doesn’t do any business online. Creating a website doesn’t have to be difficult with all the different website creation tools that are available. Whatever software you choose to use to create your site, but keep these key design principles in mind.
Make Your Site Mobile Responsive
Being mobile responsive is critical for your business website. Most adults spend a lot of time on their mobile phones every day, with plenty of people doing a lot of shopping online, with a mobile device. Your business needs to have a website that gives a positive experience to mobile users. You can use a No-Code Website Builder to help you build a mobile-friendly site.
If a potential customer lands on-site but finds it hard to read or navigate on their phone, they’re going to leave your site and head to a competitor. A bad mobile user experience affects your website in search engine rankings, which will make it harder to find with a Google search.
Make It Easy To Find
Your domain name should either match your company name or describe your company and what you do in some way. You could also choose to have multiple domain names that direct to your website. You will need to incorporate some technical SEO best practices, keyword research, content marketing, and paid advertising campaigns to drive traffic to your site.
Put Your Contact Information Above The Fold
If your business depends on people getting in touch with you or calling your sales team, put that information where they can find it easily.
Your contact information needs to be visible, and at the top of your homepage so users don’t have to search for your phone number or address to be able to get in touch with you.
If you use social media to talk to your customers, put your social links in the website header or footer, where they can be found easily.
Make It Easy To Navigate
Limit your top-level navigation menu to five clearly labeled tabs, with any related pages organized underneath them. Make sure you also have a clear way to get back to the homepage, no matter where your readers are on your site. A Google search might take your reader to another page on your site other than the homepage.
Keep Your Pages Uncluttered
Your readers need to be able to put information in context. If your website has too much information, it overloads their mind, making it hard for them to retain the new information. Make sure you use a good balance of text and graphics to create a page that looks clean.
An easy way to keep your page simple is to cut out social widgets, such as displaying your Twitter feed on your page. Before you add anything, ask yourself if you are adding information that your reader cares about. If the content of the widget doesn’t support the point of the page, don’t add it.
Make Sure It’s Accurate
It should go without saying that inaccurate information will put off your potential customers, whether your number is wrong, your product information is out of date, or you’ve made a spelling error. Proofread every page before it goes live, but check them periodically too, especially after you have made updates elsewhere on the site.
Respect The Need For Speed
Most web users will leave a website if it loads too slowly. The time that it takes your page to load can also affect the purchase decisions of a lot of shoppers too.
Make sure your website is running smoothly by keeping all your software up to date, optimizing your videos and images for faster downloads, and using a website host that can handle your bandwidth demands.
Have A Call To Action
Every page on your website should entice the reader to do something. This means that you should give them a call to action. Your landing pages should encourage users to carry out a particular action, whether that’s calling your company, signing up for your emails, or buying a product. Give the user a clear invitation to take the action that you want them to take, such as a button, a link, or a clear direction. Keep these above the fold if you can, so that visitors to your site do not have to scroll very far before they find the call to action.