From a blacksmith to a high-end computer programmer, everyone has websites these days. Simply put, there are almost 1.5 billion websites available on the Internet. Despite the presence of over a million websites, only 0.1% of them get noticed by the target audience. The rest fails to get the desired visitors due to poor web design.
Say you are looking for Ford case study analysis online in the USA. You come across two websites. One is easily readable and smoothly navigable. The other one looks too congested. Which one will you opt for? You are most likely to go with the first one since its attractive web design. The right web design can help you earn the trust of your target clients. Therefore, I have shared the top 10 practical tips to enhance your web design.
Top 10 website improvement ideas
1. Keep the web design fresh
Your web design reflects your brand image. You can’t expect to make a strong impression on your target audience if your website looks like the thousand others. Give your target audience a solid reason to choose your website over others. I would suggest you to get rid of the existing templates and customise your websites according to your business goals.
Remember, people read only 28% of the words on the website. Therefore, there is no need for overloading your homepage with plenty of texts and images. Just include the most important contents on the website. Remove the rest of them. Keep track of the trending web design trends that tend to attract traffic.
2. Keep your website free of clutter
I have often come across websites that consist of too much information. Who reads all of that? Your website can connect better with your target clients if you highlight exactly what your target clients are looking for. I always suggest my clients plan their websites around the goals they want to achieve. You can use wire-framing software to build a minimalist website rather than throwing images and texts randomly on the website.
Google pays strict attention to the ad-to-content ratio on your web page. Too many ads will bury your brand image and render a website completely unattractive. Too much content and too little advertising will make your website cluttered. Hence, you need to strike a balance.
3. Use graphical images for your products or services
Say you are looking for a little black dress online. One website shows you clean images of the dress from different angles. The other one shows you blurry ones that you can’t even zoom in. You would obviously opt for the company that shows their products and services effectively. You can use trending Photoshop tools to edit the images and make them clearer. Make sure the images have the functionality to zoom in and zoom out.
Take a look at how Quickly Legal has used their images to attract their target audience. Pictures often tend to confuse people. Therefore, pick good product shots to display on your website.
4. Make sure your website loads fast
What if you are looking for a recipe on a website and it takes forever to load? You are most likely to close the window and open another website. Your target readers will do the same thing if they find your website loading slowly. Slow loading time influences the rate of conversions as well. Use the right bandwidth and hardware infrastructure to enhance the loading speed of your website.
I would recommend every web designer to pick the best hosts first for your website. The better your hosts are, the more effective your website’s loading speed will be. Use free tools to compare the loading time of two sites and then make the right decision.
5. Ensure that your website is easily accessible to everyone
You must understand that there are different types of people out there looking for the type of services and products you are offering. You must make sure that everyone is able to learn about your products and services when they visit your website. What if people with colour blindness view your site? What if people with slow internet connections try to get a glimpse of your website? Keep all these criteria in mind while designing the website, especially if you want to cater to local clients.
The navigation and web design should be consistent throughout your website. It is better if you don’t create unrelated designs for different pages of your website. When all the pages of your website have a similar layout and design, it appeals to the viewers better.
6. Offer a smooth user experience
Search engines such as Google love websites that are well-organised. People also opt for good organisations on a website. Thus, you must organise your layout, contents and images in a proper format throughout the website. Let’s say someone wants to buy smartphones at inexpensive rates. They won’t read entire pages, will they? They are most likely to skim headlines and look at the small portion of texts. Mainly, they will focus on images and prices.
You can try using bold and easy to use fonts to stress things that you want your readers to notice. Add colour to your texts to stress the essential information on your website. Most of your target clients will ignore the important contents if the headlines are boring.
7. Include Follow and Social Share buttons
Over 3.2 billion people use different social media platforms in 2019. Facebook is the market leader, followed by Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. Producing great contents are not enough if your users aren’t able to share them. You could be missing out on plenty of social media traffic if your website doesn’t have enough social share buttons. Include the ‘Follow’ button to make sure your target clients are aware of the updates that you post on your social media business page.
Social share buttons are the non-pushy tools that urge your buyers to share your contents or products on social media. It will help you gain popularity to a great extent. The most common tools that will help you get on the ground are Shareaholic and SumoMe.
8. Use strong call-to-action buttons
What if your target audience land on your website and do not know what to do next? They may prefer other websites if they don’t find any sort of direction on your website. Call-to-actions indicate the next step that your visitors are supposed to take on a page. The call-to-action buttons guide the users through your website and help leads convert into sales. Make sure your website consists of more top/middle of the funnel calls-to-action rather than the bottom of the funnel calls-to-action.
I usually read the entire page across the website to identify the purpose of call-to-action buttons. I tend to change them if most of the call-to-actions determine a trial or consultation. You can try including call-to-actions that tend to educate your clients and solve their pain points and assignment problem solution.
9. Make your website mobile-optimised
80% of people use the Internet on their smartphones. 40% of them tend to visit a competitor’s site if they don’t find your website easily accessible on their devices. Therefore, make sure your website is designed to fit the demands and needs of your target audience. What are the things people may look for while accessing my website on mobile? Will I be able to satisfy visitors’ demands? Ask yourself these questions before designing the website.
You can take a look at some of the most popular mobile websites to understand how mobile optimisation looks like. Mobile optimised websites will help your target clients look at your services on the go. It will be easier for you to increase customer satisfaction.
10. Use optimum white space
In case you are new to this field, let me first explain what white space is. It is one of the most crucial web design elements that break the page and enhances the readability. Some people may also call it ‘negative space’ since this area is usually empty and doesn’t consist of any text and visual item. In my opinion, white space is an amazing tool that will help you balance the different design elements and organise your content better.
Website owners may want to fill it because they may assume white space makes room for more information. But, designers love it! We consider it as the visual breathing room for the eye since it doesn’t involve graphics, gutters and margins.
All in all, these ten practical steps will help you design the most incredible website for your target clients. Besides the tips mentioned above, I would ask all of you to focus on the quality of the contents used on your website as well. A fantastic web design, coupled with high-end quality contents is everything that you need for a robust online presence.
