Quick Tips & Tricks to Improve Your Web Design
As eager as you may be to design your site, you shouldn’t just jump right into it. Web design isn’t hard once you know what you’re doing but at the same time it’s an intricate process that takes time and thought. Within the first few seconds of visiting your page, your viewers should be able to easily comprehend exactly what your company is and what the services are that it offers.
Can your viewers easily navigate around your page? Is it easy to understand? Is your site visibly appealing? All of these factors play a crucial role and will be the difference between someone that stays and someone that immediately closes out without hesitation.
If you find that you are lacking any or all of these factors it’s time to start considering a new approach to your design and web optimization. A web page needs feed into its user experience, functionality and appropriately address the content of your page. But, no need to stress about it, we’ve done all the hard work for you. Here are the top 10 ways to improve your web design.
1.) Create an Overall Plan
This may seem fairly obvious to most but it cannot be stressed enough. Perhaps the most important component of web design is ensuring that your ideas are organized and well-orchestrated. It is really worth it to sit back and brainstorm quite a bit before you start actually designing anything.
When creating a plan you want to address the step-by-step journey your potential client will take. You want to ask yourself questions like: What pages are they going to visit? What content are they going to be interested in? What type of things are going to catch their eye? The ultimate goal is to nurture leads through a specific sales funnel.
Your webpage should be designed around the next step, not the final step. You want to make sure your buyer’s questions are answered in the right order so that your website is easily navigable and as convenient as possible. Take knowledge from your past customers and use that to predict the behavior of your future clients.
2.) Keep Content Relatively Simple
When it comes to creating a successful web design, having more content isn’t necessarily better. You want to avoid things that can distract your viewers from the important content. Complicated animations, too many pictures or videos, long readings, and many other things can all contribute to overwhelming a viewer and will result in them leaving your page.
The average attention span of most people is going to be somewhere around 8 seconds. So essentially you only have a few seconds for someone to find the information they need. Because of this, right away you need something that both grabs their attention and tells them what they need to know.
The best way to do this is with short but powerful sections that are straightforward but well articulated. Don’t forget to include interesting visuals such as pictures or videos to compliment the content you are addressing.
3.) Integrate Social Media
Creating solid content will not reach its utmost potential unless it is shared by the community. Because of this it is essential to integrate social media within your webpage and more specifically to add “share” buttons.
These “share” buttons are typically located at the beginning or end of each post or page and provide a direct link to social media sites such as twitter, instagram, or facebook so that users can effortlessly share your content with all of their friends. One click of a “share” button is the difference between one person seeing your content and twenty people seeing your content.
4.) Make Your Site Easy to Navigate
Being able to navigate easily is crucial for any site. You want some sort of simple organization window or tool from which users can find the key places they need to navigate to. There is nothing more frustrating then a site with a poorly designed navigation interface.
Some characteristics of an effective navbar include streamlined content, navigation hierarchy, and responsive design. If your users can’t find what they’re looking for quickly they are almost guaranteed to leave your page and look for another site that has a more navigable interface.
5.) Make Your Site Mobile Friendly
A common mistake many people also make is that they forget to make their site mobile friendly. This is critical especially considering 80% of people in today’s technology-driven society access the internet from their phones on a daily basis.
You want to ensure that your site isn’t just able to be viewed on mobile devices but that it is just as easily navigable on mobile as it is on a computer. In addition to that you want to also analyze your mobile version’s loading time. For some pointers on getting your mobile site to load faster check out a few of these examples here.
The list of factors that go into web optimization is endless but these are the key factors you should keep in mind. Remember, don’t be afraid to take your time with anything and that a successful web page doesn’t happen right away. Keep things simple but interesting. More doesn’t necessarily mean better and limiting your content can prove to be quite beneficial. If you found these tips and tricks helpful be sure to check out our other blogs on photography, videography, web design and SEO.