Your website is a vital marketing tool that helps you attract, engage and convert your target customers. A carefully designed website enriches your users’ experience, boosts customer traffic and sales. Some of the elements that elevate an average website to a great one are its simplicity, attractiveness, ease of navigation, speed, and engaging content.
While creativity is important, these tips on web design will help you create an impactful web design.
Seven tips for creating an impactful web design
Focus on aesthetics
Website visitors form an opinion within 50 milliseconds about your website and brand.
According to a study, the top influencer of first impressions is the website’s aesthetics. Given the short attention span of visitors, you will need to ensure the visual elements of layout, visuals, size, colors, and contrast are optimized. Professional web designers leverage ‘visual hierarchy’ to direct users’ attention to what matters the most. Visual hierarchy is the way the visual elements are arranged based on the natural path viewers take when seeing a website. For instance, every visitor will see a large video or image at the top of a page. However, a CTA (call to action) in small fonts at the bottom of a page is not going to be seen.
The elements to optimize to achieve high prominence using visual hierarchy include:
- position – at the top of the page
- large size
- Unique colors
- Strong contrast
- video, images, icons
- use of whitespace
Create high-quality content
While a site’s aesthetics dictate the first impression, the content influences the users’ intention to recommend and revisit your site. Follow these tips to create engaging content:
- Ensure the website content is original, concise, easy to read, and informative.
- You need to also optimize the content for search engines (search engine optimization) by including relevant keywords.
- While avoiding jargon, slang, and excessive text, include rich descriptions of the services and products you offer. Explain images and photos with clear subtitles.
- Ensure there is a dedicated FAQ page to answer your customers’ questions.
Prioritize speed
The slow loading speed of a website is directly linked to its bounce rate and reduces page views, conversion rate, and user satisfaction. Forty-seven percent of users abandon websites that take more than 3 seconds to load. A delay of even one second can reduce the conversion rate by 7 percent.
Optimize navigation
Good user experience is the key to boosting your website traffic, conversions, and, eventually, sales revenue. Poor user experience, according to a study, causes 70 percent of visitors to abandon shopping carts. Research how your target users search and browse on websites and use the data to design menus, the site architecture, and other navigation tools. Your users should be able to move around your website with ease and find the information they want quickly and efficiently.
Apart from the home page, every page needs to be engaging and easy to navigate. Here are some tips on optimizing website navigation:
- Keep the visuals simple -Large videos, animations, too many flash components, and infographics can take a longer time to load compared to simple text and graphics.
- Ensure the buttons in the navigation bar are well-ordered -For instance, your viewer will want to know about you and the products or services you offer before they contact you. Make sure the “About Us,” “Company” and “Products” buttons are located before the “Contact Us” button.
- Fix broken links- Check the links regularly on your website and replace the ones that are not working.
- Analyze flow patterns – Flow patterns show the route your visitors take initially to find your site, the order of their engagement, and the number of pages visited. With this information, you can make the necessary adjustments on the site to boost engagement.
Optimize for mobile
Over 40 percent of users abandon a website that is not mobile-friendly. A mobile-optimized and responsive design is mandatory for modern websites. Ensure all elements of the website arrange themselves appropriately in any resolution.
Use clear CTA
An effective call to action or CTA button guides your visitors effortlessly to the action they need to take. They remove your users’ confusion and friction and streamline the user experience. Design your CTA in a way to ensure they stand out on all pages, are direct and simple.
Add social proof
Consumers rely on reviews and recommendations from other buyers to make a purchase decision. Ensure your claims on your products are supported with evidence to build your credibility. Some ways to add social proof include:
- Product reviews
- Case studies
- Endorsements from influencers
- Awards, accreditation, and rankings
- Social media following
Tracy is the Design Manager here at Redwood Creative. She’s been designing amazing graphics and web layouts for large and small businesses for upwards of 7 years.
