5 Best Practices for Website Design
We’ve all been to one: A janky, outdated website that looks and feels as if it hasn’t left the AOL era. And no matter how experienced, affordable, or efficient a company may be, if its website comes off as amateur hour, there’s no telling how much business they’re losing due to inadequate Web Design.
So what makes for an exceptional website? Is it a sleek appearance that immediately captures the reader’s attention? Perhaps the simplicity of the layout and navigation allows for a more positive user experience. The truth is that it’s both of those things and a whole lot more to make your website stand out amidst the over 1 billion websites currently floating around on the internet!
Website design is one of the biggest factors determining whether a prospective client will be hesitant to do business with your company – let alone flat out reject you. Research shows that nearly 90% of visitors leave a website due to slow loading times, with just over 73% citing non-responsive design or poor navigation as other reasons to leave.
Look, you don’t have to have a website that looks like it belongs in the Louvre to be successful. But there are a variety of design elements you should be incorporating into your web design to ensure your visitors aren’t clicking away to the nearest competitor that shows up on relevant search engine results.
Here are five of the best practices for website design every business needs to enhance itsdigital marketing strategy.
1. Unique Content & Imagery
You know those websites that are chock-full of generic photos of everyday people shaking hands, laughing or smiling at one another, or depicting any other gesture or posture that hardly resembles our actual lives? Yeah, don’t be that website!
Stock imagery and generic content are surefire ways to turn off your target audience and steer visitors away from your website. For starters, Google’s algorithms rank websites according to how much unique, original content and imagery they incorporate into their web design, which means plastering your website with cliche photos or generic wording will negatively impact your SEO rankings in the long run.
People want to see the faces of your organization and hear authenticity in the voice, tone, and message you inject into your website’s content. Unique, original content and imagery should be mandatory in your web design operations, as it only adds more credibility and authority to your brand.
2. Cohesive Branding
Does your website bombard the visitor with an excess of colors, imagery, or content? If so, don’t be surprised when users are put off by the confusing overindulgence and are more inclined to click elsewhere.
Piggybacking off of unique content and imagery, another essential practice for website design is implementing cohesive, aligned branding. Logos, backgrounds, color schemes, fonts, banner graphics, custom photography, etc. – all of these little details add up to notable factors of branding consistency.
The layout, design, graphics, and tone of your website need to align with one another to avoid confusing the user and dissuading Google’s SEO ranking algorithms.
3. Responsive Web Design
The majority of web traffic today is conducted on smartphones or mobile devices. This means if your website isn’t efficiently designed for mobile usage, you can bet you’re missing out on significant traffic and lead generation.
Websites that aren’t mobile friendly continue to suppress their online presence, and research has shown that 93% of people will leave a website because it didn’t display or perform properly on their device. A responsive web design means your website will adapt to any digital screen it’s accessed with, performing with the same quality and speed as it would on any laptop or desktop computer.
Your Web Design strategy needs to keep mobile users in mind to appease what can be assumed to be around 50% of your overall web traffic.
4. Intelligible Accessibility
A beautiful-looking website will only go so far if users are constantly finding themselves confused over the accessibility and navigation aspects of your website design. Banner menus, inbound linking, sitemap structure, Call-to-Actions, search bars; making your website as user-friendly as possible to click around is arguably the most crucial element to any successful web design strategy.
Here are some essential tips to keep in mind when it comes to optimizing your website’s accessibility and navigation:
- Keep the structure of your menu bars or top-page navigation as simple and blatant as possible
- Include navigation options at the footer of each web page
- Keep menu titles as straightforward as possible (ex: Contact Us, Service Areas, About Us, etc.)
- Include a search bar at the top of every page
- Incorporate links to specific pages within your website’s content and copy
- Implement breadcrumbs to help track and display where a user is on your website
- Utilize concise Call-to-Action verbiage and clickable links or buttons as much as possible
The longer it takes for users to click around your website or find specific pages, the more frustrated they’ll become and the more likely they’ll leave your website.
5. Built-In SEO
Your web design needs to cater to what your target audience is searching for online when trying to come across the products or services your business offers. This is where implementing built-in SEO is pivotal to your online visibility, as it will efficiently optimize your site to help you outrank your competitors while generating more organic traffic.
Target keyword research, link-building strategies, proper meta and title tags, and well-written blogs are all components of an effective built-in SEO design. A website with built-in SEO is engineered to enhance your company’s online presence by improving your rankings among relevant local search engine results.
Perfect Your Web Design Strategy With Triton Commerce!
Effective, efficient website design takes time, focus, and experience. Rushing the appearance and functionality of your website will only hurt you in the long run and significantly reduce your existing online presence.
At Triton Commerce, we help companies of all sizes and industries design websites that are specifically engineered to generate leads, improve user experience, and spread awareness of your brand. Think your website could use a makeover? Contact us today to schedule a consultation with our web design specialists!