Improving Your Website Design

Want to attract more visitors to your website? Convert casual visitors into leads? Boost online sales? All of these objectives are heavily dependent upon web design. Every aspect of your site’s design, including colors, fonts, images, videos, etc., plays a role in determining how successful your online marketing efforts will be. These are the things that can either cause consumers to quickly leave (“bounce” from your site) or to stay on your page and learn more about you and your products or services. So how does your current website stack up? To address this question, our two-part blog series will cover 13 smart tips for SMB web design.

Let’s get started!

1. Include a Professional Logo

Your company logo is one of the most immediately recognizable aspects of your brand. Consequently, it’s very important that your website feature a prominently placed and professional-looking logo. This logo should be displayed on the home page of your site, in addition to being included on subpages as a means of linking users back home. This allows for fast, simple navigation.

2. Use Intuitive Navigation

No one wants to waste their time on a website that’s difficult to navigate. The more complex your web design is and the harder a consumer has to work to find what he or she is looking for, the more likely the person is to leave your page for a competing brand. Intuitive navigation, on the other hand, increases the likelihood that visitors will remain on your site, thus boosting your conversion rates. Avoid putting links to every single little subpage on your primary navigation bar, instead putting the focus on the most important pages. Less critical pages can be linked at the footer, and other pages can be found by users via a strategically placed search bar.

3. Banish Clutter

Although it can be tempting to fill your pages with information and images, it’s important that you avoid this common pitfall! Cluttered or “busy” websites are a major hinderance to sales. Research has shown that the human brain actually stops processing information when it’s confronted with too many options, so don’t overwhelm your readers with competing calls-to-action and other visual clutter like photos, GIFs, and pop-ups that will draw user attention away from the most important information on the page.

4. Use Color Wisely

You might think that because bright colors “pop”, they’re the way to go. This isn’t necessarily the case. Colors that are too bright or poorly contrasted against other shades may be too difficult for consumers to read, thus causing them to quickly abandon your website. It’s wise to stick with a neutral color palette with only small dashes of color for headlines and other key areas of text, which can be used to guide visitors to your most important content.

5. Embrace the Space

Don’t cram your headers, copy, and images together. You’ll get much better results when you leave enough space between paragraphs and images for the consumer to absorb all the features of your website and process the information being provided to them. Well-controlled white space can help direct consumer focus and assist users with moving more efficiently through the sales funnel.

6. Keep Fonts Simple

Poorly chosen fonts can also drive consumers away from your website, so be smart with your choices. Make sure that the fonts you select are appropriate across all web browsers and devices. Plus, it’s also important to choose a font that compliments your logo and represents your brand as a whole.

7. Consider Each Page a Landing Page

8. Be Picture Perfect

9. Respect the Fold

10. Be Responsive

11. Ditch Flash

12. Bedazzle Your Buttons

13. Test, Test, Test