Whether you’ve recently decided to spruce up your web presence with the help of a custom web design company, or you’re looking for small things you can do yourself, it is important to ask yourself a few questions before engaging in a web design overhaul.
- Can visitors to your site figure out what your company does within 5 seconds of being on your site?
- Can visitors to your site easily get to your blog if they need to?
- Does the layout of your pricing information make sense?
- Is your bounce rate very high?
If the answer to these questions is ‘no,’ you may need to reconsider how your website is designed and how it can be optimized fully. After all, a website needs to utilize designs that feed into your website’s overall user experience and functionality. Additionally, your website should transparently communicate to your audience what exactly your business does, why you do it, and who your audience is.
We’ve already covered some elements of web design - like increasing your website conversion rate. In this article, however, we will cover some essential tips you can harness to begin improving your web design.
Make A Plan
When you start designing your website, be sure that you are mapping out your buyer’s journey. You should consider how they will interact with the site - from their first visit to when they finally decide to become a part of your customer base.
Consider what pages your audience will view, the content they will read, and the offers that will convert them into a customer. Ultimately, focusing on these questions will help you create a site that can develop leads through a sales funnel.
Designing your site is all about answering the right questions in the right order. In this regard, context can be very helpful. Consider what you already know about your current customers (maybe even interview them) and look into how they went from a visitor to a customer. You can use this data to map out your web design strategy.
Remove Certain Things
Like it or not, certain aspects of your website may end up detracting from the values and messaging you’re hoping to get across. Complicated animations, overly long content, stock website images are all red flags to watch out for.
After all, your audience only has an attention span of around eight seconds. With that in mind, you need to dazzle them with a first impression that easily and clearly conveys your main points. You should utilize short, powerful sections of content and relevant photos/icons that are organized through concise and clear headers.
Once these steps have been followed, clean up your content to avoid ambiguous terminology and technical jargon - these things will only confuse your audience. Words/phrases like ‘generation,’ ‘flexible,’ ‘robust,’ ‘easy to use,’ ‘cutting edge,’ ‘groundbreaking’ have been used dozens of times and they won't help your content stand apart from the crowd.
Use Social Shares and Follow Buttons
Even if you’re producing great content, you are only hurting yourself in the long run if you are not letting users share the content that you have. For instance, does your website lack social share buttons? If so, you could be losing out on lots of traffic that can come from people sharing your content on different social platforms.
Social sharing buttons can be found on the top or bottom of blog posts. These buttons each contain icons for different social media platforms and let users share the page right to the social media channel of their choosing. Simply put, these buttons are non-pushy tools that encourage sharing on social media by your customers.
Call to Action
After your prospective customer has arrived at your site, how will they know what to do next? You need to hint at pages they can view and actions they can take by providing them with some form of direction. This is where call-to-action buttons come into play.
Call-to-action buttons are one of many elements that help direct users towards the next steps they should take on a webpage. However, if most of your pages or blogs only contain a CTA for a demo/trial/consultation, you should consider mixing things up. CTA buttons should help users educate themselves and provide information that relieves pain points. If these needs are being met, users will feel better about using your website to research your services.
Conclusion
Employing a custom web design company or overhauling your ecommerce website design can seem daunting at first. However, by following these tips, you will be setting yourself up for success. Also, if you have additional questions about web design, consider contacting KitelyTech today. KitelyTech has years of experience in web design, app development, and many other new and emerging areas of the tech market. We have spent years working with entrepreneurs and small business owners to make sure tech is helping them meet their business needs. Reach out to KitelyTech on (800) 274 2908 today to learn more.
Also, if you are considering hiring a web design company, please look into our article on tips for hiring a web design firm.
