All businesses want a website that successfully communicates their brand vision and encourages the visitor to purchase your products or services online. However, a lot of businesses do not take the time to invest in excellent website design, which is the heart and soul of a great website.
A creative website design can push your customers down the sales funnel and a poor one will result in fewer conversions, so why do businesses neglect such a key aspect of website production?
The short answer is time and resources. You may believe that you can design and create your own, after all, design is subjective. However, there are elements of web design that only an experienced web designer or digital agency can help you with. They have the knowledge and expertise from typography to colour that enable them to create a user journey that works seamlessly with your brand or business goals. Outsourcing your website design is often the most cost-effective solution when it comes to saving time and in-house resources and will result in a great product at the end of it.
If you’re looking at having a website designed or want to refresh your website with something more in line with your brand, then here are some Do’s and Don’ts to look out for.
DO: Combine UX (user experience) and UI (user interface)
User-friendly websites should be a top priority. Creating an easy journey by anticipating what your target audience wants and pointing them towards the end point is the purpose of good UX. Your customer experience of your website will directly reflect in your conversion rate, so its imperative that you have a website designed with the user’s interaction in mind. Another thing to consider is that a recent algorithm update by Google has focused on UX design rankings, so a poor UX design can negatively affect where you sit in the search rankings and a good user experience can push you further up the results.
However, UX should not be the primary focus, a balance of UX and UI is the perfect solution to achieve your business aims.
UI is equally important because this determines how your website looks and feels to the user. Research has shown that a person judges your website design in less than a tenth of a second, so ultimately poor web design can have a negative effect on your business. Ensuring your website not only functions well but looks great and matches your brand in tone, colour, typography and aesthetic is more likely to convince your customer to get in touch or make a purchase.
DO: Responsive Web Design
In this digital age, we all view the world through our mobile phones and tablets. This means in order for a website to work effectively as a tool to entice your customers in purchasing a product or service, your website should have a responsive web design. You may have a creative and fabulous looking website but if you can’t view it on a mobile phone in all its glory, then you are likely to lose huge chunks of your audience.
DO: Think about content
Content is almost always added after the website design has been completed, yet it is one of the most important aspects of your website. Content is king. Not prioritising your copy as part of the web design process can have negative consequences. Although your web design may have great UX, if the copy is poor or does not support or follow the UX journey correctly, you are less likely to convince a customer to click on a CTA.
Your content should be engaging, not too long and integrate within the website design as if it is meant to be there, not added in varying lengths as an afterthought.
DON’T: Make your website design too complicated
We have all seen some spectacular websites, some completely unique in style, some covered in the latest in animation and videography. However, over-complicating your web design can confuse and distract customers from their goal. Visual content will always be engaging but you need to make sure any design choices look like it should be there and not just added for the sake of it. Simplicity is often best.
DON’T: Add too many CTAs
This may seem like an odd ‘don’t’, after all, CTAs are a key element of the user journey, however adding too many can confuse a user and take them away from where you want them to be. Being selective with where you place your CTA’s is a vital part of good web design and they should always stand out from the design.
DON’T: Make the user wait
Adding too many design choices, visuals, photos and animations can all slow down a website. You need to be able to load and interact with a web page in under 2 seconds to make the most of the attention span of a user. Similarity, don’t have huge chunks of text at the top of your homepage as reading more than a short paragraph can be off-putting to visitors. In this modern world, the ability to connect almost immediately is driving forward the way web designers view their graphic design and changing the way they create web pages to make it quicker and easier for the user to quickly identify what the business is, what a business is and what a business can provide for them.
Here at Click Through Digital we would always recommend using an experienced website designer or design agency. The knowledge and expertise is essential when looking at creating or improving your online presence.
We are an established design agency in North Yorkshire that understands the need for UX focused website design while balancing great creativity and style. We design eye-catching and memorable websites that capture your business brand and vision, incorporating excellent UX and UI to give you the digital platform you need to convert your web visitors into sales, leads and customers.
If you think that is something that could be of benefit to your business, then please contact us here at Click Through Digital today.
