Creating a website and having it up and running is not as easy as it sounds. If you ask a website developer, he would tell you how little things and features play an important role in making your website design optimized.
For people who have little knowledge about website development and design, it is hard to understand the technicalities behind a successful website. All that matters to them is that their website is Live. Well, it doesn’t work like that in the long run.
When a user visits your website, he or she forms an opinion in just a few seconds. This opinion is based on the design of your website.
People spend quite an amount on their web design costs. This is because a good website structure would result in credibility, conversions, and, the success of the website.
It is found that most of the negative feedback regarding websites is based on the design, development, and layout.
Therefore, it’s important to hire only professional website developers. However, in many cases, website owners cannot afford to hire a website designer as they are running low on their budget.
Hence, we have highlighted the 8 best website design practices for you to succeed online.
#1 Lessen the Text on your website.
The first step towards successful website development is to minimize the text on your landing page(s). What most people do is fill in a lot of words on their homepage and other landing pages. This is where they go wrong.
Now, many of you would argue on this that your homepage has to be all about your brand and what you have to offer. You are right you should write everything about your company, brand, and products but instead of using longer sentences, use short sentences that communicate the message and are easily readable.
Additionally, you can also make your paragraphs shorter. The trick is to break the paragraphs so that each paragraph is informative.
When your potential visitors visit your website, they are looking for information and they might not be interested in reading long paragraphs of text.
Therefore, make your homepage design clutter-less so that only the necessary information is visible to the visitors.
#2 Emphasize more on Visuals
A picture is worth a thousand words. That’s true in the case of websites too.
A successful website would always have more visuals than text.
Professional website builders always know how to create a website in such a way that their visitors can get the message by just the visuals rather than writing long texts.
#3 Prominent call-to-actions
Another practice that a web developer must emphasize is to make the CTA buttons obvious by making them stand out. The CTA buttons on your website should be spotted by your visitors in just a few seconds.
They should be big and powerful so that your website visitors are encouraged to take the next step. If you aim to get more conversions and credibility you must have effective Call-to-action buttons.
For example, if you want your visitors to sign up. The sign-up button should be prominent on all landing pages so that your visitors don’t have to go back to the homepage for it. Also, they are reminded of it every now and then.
Moreover, make sure that whatever your website goal is, your CTA button aligns with it. If you are an e-commerce website, then your website goal would be to get more customers to buy your products. Your CTA buttons should encourage potential customers to make a purchase rather than sign up for an account.
#4 Simplified navigation
A successful website development comprises simplified website navigation. If your website visitors experience a difficult time looking for what they want on your website then your website design could be a failure.
Visitors don’t usually have patience. If they cannot find what they are looking for they will leave. They need reinforcement.
If you opt for a complex design just to make your website design look different from the rest, users might not be able to navigate successfully through it.
Therefore, you must ensure that your website designer must create a website with user-friendly navigation for you.
Your main navigation menu should be present on top of each page in a horizontal position. Otherwise, users will get confused.
Moreover, the fewer options your menu has the better it is. This is because of the consumer psyche.
The more options you give your consumers, there are more chances they get confused and they may take longer to decide.
So, keep your website design user-friendly and navigations simple in order to boost conversion rates.
#5 Mobile-friendly design
As we all know, nowadays people prefer mobile browsing over desktop usage. As people have access to their mobile phones mostly 24/7, they are more likely to surf the internet through their phones.
Website owners are hiring website developers to make their websites optimized for mobile devices and pay sufficient web design costs for it. This is because they know that their potential customers would not want a poor mobile website.
The trick is simple, you need to get your website optimized for mobile phones in order to succeed online.
Recommended post: What are the benefits of responsive website design
#6 Make SEO your priority
Search Engine Optimization is another important aspect that you must not miss out on. This is not just limited to adding keywords to the posts on your website.
In order to make your web design SEO optimized, you can do several things such as:
- XML sitemap
- Robots file
- Inter-linking among webpages
- Regular blogging
- Fast loading webpages
- Image optimization
SEO begins with a website and therefore, building an SEO-friendly website must be your top priority.
#7 Enhance the loading speed
The loading speed of your website plays an important role. Most of the time the page loading speed is related to server traffic and website hosting. However, sometimes the website development and design can also result in a slower page loading speed.
This is because when we add an element to our websites such as videos, complex media files, and images, our page loading speed gets affected.
In order to speed up your website’s loading speed, you must design your website in a way that the image files are optimized, your media files are combined & minified, HTTP requests are reduced and you take full advantage of the caching tools.
A poor page loading speed would result in not only serious problems for your website’s reputation but can also damage your search engine rankings, therefore you must work on improving it.
Recommended post: 7 Ways to optimize the loading speed of your WordPress website
#8 Color scheme / Branding
For a website to succeed online, this is a common piece of advice any web developer would give. Color schemes are an important part of website design and when you are not hiring a professional for it, you must make sure you don’t choose the wrong colors.
For a successful website design, you must match the color scheme with your brand image. Choose the colors that are aligned with your logo.
Conclusion:
Website design and development have become easier over the years and can be done effortlessly & cost-effectively. The above 8 practices would help you improve your website and make it succeed online without a web developer.
However, for better website design & development services at an affordable price, you could always hire a website builder in India.
