A large percentage of people visit many websites throughout the day whether this is for work, study or in their free time. It means that for your website to be a success, it will need to stand out from the crowd and serve a purpose. Whether it is a company website, your professional website, a blog, online community or any other type of site, it is crucial that you put the work in to make sure that it is the best that it can be and that those that visit will stay on the site. So, how do you go about doing this?
Memorable Domain Name
The domain name should always be easy to remember, short, if possible, relevant and easy to spell. Businesses often use their company name as the domain address, and this is a smart move. You can check domain name availability online and spend some time planning what the best address and extension should be — .com remains the best if it is available.
Engaging Home Page
The 3-second rule states that you only have 3 seconds to persuade a user to stay on the page. What this means is that you need to make an instant impact, which you can achieve through:
- Engaging language
- A call to action
- An animation
- Bold colors
- Imagery
- A clear footer
Together these should collectively create an enticing homepage which informs visitors of who you are, and what you can offer. Visitors should quickly be able to determine what you do, and should be inspired by what they read, and prompted to take action from it.
Images and infographics will immediately personalize your site and make it memorable and engaging as opposed to text alone. A footer at the bottom of the website should include internal links and will give your home page a cleaner, more polished look.
Attractive Design
A website needs to be visually pleasing if you want people to use it. It means having an attractive color scheme without any brash or contrasting colors and having a simple, clean and tidy layout. People often make the mistake of trying to cram too much text and images into a web-page. Don’t be afraid of white space on your site, as this is better than an overly busy, cramped website with too much content.
The color scheme you use should feature throughout all pages of the website, as consistency helps portray your brand message. Poor web design will only reflect badly on your company and reputation as a whole; if your website is not up to scratch, how can you possibly be trusted to provide a professional service? As a business website is usually the first port of call for any potential customers, don’t scrimp. It will be worth it when you see customer retention and loyalty once they have come to you after visiting your website.
Simple Navigation
It is a smart idea to divide the website up into separate pages so that it is not only easy for the visitor to find the information that they are looking for, but the navigation must be intelligent and straightforward. It will mean being able to access every page with a single click, no matter where you are on the website.
Consider helpful plug-ins and leave a feedback and comments section, as reviews from happy customers can do great things when it comes to reliability. Remember, the more user-friendly and consumer-based your site is, the more appealing your company will be.
Optimized For Different Devices
In today’s day and age people use various devices when online, which means that the website must be optimized for different devices. It can be incredibly frustrating to use a website on a phone when it has not been optimized. It can make it hard to click on links and get to separate pages, but an optimized site will make it simple and easy to use the site no matter if you are using a phone, tablet, computer or any other device.
As most users now operate on smartphones, you could be considerably setting yourself back if you fail to get your website optimized for mobile. You could be missing out on great potential customers without even realizing. More than ever, people are heading online anytime, anywhere, so limiting yourself to just a web browser for monitors is a bad idea.
These are the key areas that you need to focus on to make a website great. No matter what the purpose is of the website, you will want to offer visitors a good experience and encourage them to visit the website again and again. This can be challenging, but with careful thought and planning, you can design a website which will stand out from the crowd and add value.
