3 Critical Rules for Small Business Web Design
Your website is like your front line on the web. Visitors will determine within only a few seconds whether they will continue looking around your site, or whether they will go back to Google and try a different result. Luckily, there are several tips to follow for website design to ensure that your users have a good experience.
Simplicity Rules
This may sound straight forward, but many people get this one wrong. It does not mean that you have to have a bare site, tons of white space, or only list your products and services. Rather, it is about having a specific point that you are conveying and making that easily recognizable. Adding unnecessary flashy bits to your web design will most likely not improve the look or customer experience and will cause your site to load more slowly. Don’t get me wrong, a sleek stylish website that seems “flashy” because it looks polished is not what we are talking about here. Just because a website looks fantastic and expensive, doesn’t mean it is out of reach for you or considered “flashy/hard/time-consuming” by web designers or web developers. Too many pictures or graphics, lots of colors, and too many text fonts will put your customers into sensory overload, avoid it.
Clear Call to Action
When a customer walks into your store what do they do? Most likely they will browse for the items they came for, look for any other products that catch their attention and then walk over to the register to pay. The concept is the same online with your website. When a visitor arrives on your site, they should know exactly what to do. Things should be categorized in a way that will make sense to the majority of people. If you are a service oriented business, it is especially true that your customer looks for you to guide them for each next step (ie. the sales process).
Your website, in the same way, needs to have clear directions on what to do next. If your visitors can not figure out where to go or what to do, they will not become your customers. The most important tip you can follow is this: Stand back 10 feet from your computer while looking at your homepage; you should be able to see your call to action. If not, go back to the drawing board.
Professional, Polished and Optimized
Once your website has been developed and design is finished, you want to enjoy the finished product, right? Unfortunately, if a website is not optimized from the start, it may not bring you the same results as you would hope for. This can happen several ways: web designers that are not up to date on current SEO, designers who do not know any SEO, and do it yourself website services. Often a designer may have great capabilities artistically. Yet, if images and creatives are not optimized for size, text, and tags correctly; it can slow down your website so much that you lose visitors. Additionally, the tag optimization for images will increase your visibility and your search engine rankings. Not taking advantage of this is only going to make the rest of your optimization plan take longer and will require more work. While there are some decent options out there to build your own website, there are many decisions you will have to make. Generally, skilled designers, expert search engine optimizers and valuable conversion specialists spend years to gain knowledge in their field as well as significant amounts of time to keep up with the industry. If you can do so, use them.
At Reaim CG, we would love to collaborate with you on your next web design project. We will work with you at all stages of the project to ensure your plan becomes reality. Contact us today for a free web design consultation.