Have you ever encountered an extremely poorly designed website? Imagine one so bad that you do not want anything to do with a company. A terrible website may confuse you as to why they thought it would be a good idea. If you have encountered such a website, you are not alone. Many people are not aware of what makes a website good and what sections they should have on it. Unsurprisingly, website design matters to most customers more than you may think. Here are some reasons why website design matters and tips for you to create the best website design possible for your business.
Why does website design matter?
To put it simply, website design matters because your website is your best salesperson. This is because your website is the first thing that many potential customers see before they even consider visiting you in person. When your design is organized and somewhat unique, people are more likely to consider you rather than a company with a design that looks like it has not been updated in decades or a company that has a difficult-to-navigate design.
Good Website Design Tips
Website design, especially in a time where likely all your competitors have a website as well, is not easy. You want to try to do something that will make you stand out from the rest while also being easy to use. If your website is too simple or too complicated, potential leads will get frustrated and abandon you quickly. You should strive to find a happy medium with your website, which can be accomplished by considering our top elements of good website design tips!
Speed
With the amount of online browsing that most people do every day, most of us have encountered a website that takes what seems like an eternity to load. Our short attention spans and patience convince us to move on to another site if the one we want to look at does not load quick enough. According to a study done by Pingdom, the longer a website takes to load sees an increased bounce rate. If you are not familiar, bounce rate is the percent of users that visit one page on a website and leave before looking at other pages. Your goal should be to keep your bounce rate low so that you know that valuable leads are viewing more information that you provide.
If your website takes less than 3 seconds to load, your bounce rate will only be around 10 percent. But as the load time increases, your bounce rate spikes up. Once the load time is at 5 seconds, your bounce rate hits almost 40 percent and goes up from there. Needless to say, website load speeds can severely affect your online traffic. Invest in a good webhost and optimize your site for all devices to keep consumer attention.
Unique and engaging display
As mentioned before, there are so many websites out there that it is hard to come up with something unique. The most unique websites often come from website designers with years of experience rather than utilizing default templates. But even a default template can keep customer attention if your information is organized in an effective way. Put the most essential information at the top of your pages and organize your content so that what you most want customers to read draws significant attention. Color scheme is also important; make sure your website and logos match with each other.
Desktop and mobile friendly
Regardless of how many people may view your website on a desktop computer, it is important to optimize for mobile users as well. With the prevalence of cell phones in our society, these users can make up a large portion of potential leads for your business. If your website looks bad on mobile devices, it may dissuade users from pursuing your products or services. Many website design applications allow you to preview how your site will look on mobile devices, so be sure to utilize this feature while designing.
High-quality content
Content should be developed with your ideal customer in mind. If you are aware of your target demographic, it is a good idea to cater content towards them to influence a purchasing decision. Your content must help answer a variety of questions, provide plenty of information about your products and services, and guide the visitor through your website until they become a customer. Lacking this content may push potential customers away and towards a website that does have it.
Lead generation tools
In the race to get new customers, lead generation tools are essential for your website design. You should utilize Google Analytics and other programs to keep track of your most trafficked website areas and then improve them. Add forms to these popular pages to get more information on leads that will help grow your business. Be sure to place many calls-to-action (CTAs) throughout your website so that users are influenced to utilize your services or buy your products. Sometimes the difference between a new customer and losing a website visitor is as simple as asking them to fill out a form or subscribe to your newsletter.
Get some website design help
The importance of good website design cannot be stated enough with these tips. Focused Engagement is a full service digital marketing agency that offers website design services. We will help you gain the most traffic and new customers possible. Contact us today and follow our social media channels @focusengage to keep up with us as we strive to improve local businesses!