Planning for an effective website design can be a very critical to your overall online success. Many business owners skip some of the main important factors when going through design process. Let’s go through five key factors that you should have on your checklist when designing your website.
Unique Design
How does the design reflect your brand? Is it designed for your audience? How does it compare to your competitors? Professionally designed website should achieve more than just look pretty. Carefully chose your main key components that you want to have on your website. Before you approve and execute your design do some simple Q&A and see how people respond to it. After all, this design will represent your brand online and your online success depends on it.
Easy Navigation
Never have your visitors search for areas of interest. Provide an easy to use navigation that offers main information only a click away. Whether this is for your products or service never place important information deep within your navigation structure. Sure some website can have hundreds of pages, but those websites can use mega menus and include an easier way to categorize their pages. Your website navigation should guide the visitors through your website, not make them feel like they are lost.
Contact Information
How can your visitors contact you? Ensure that your contact information is clearly visible throughout your website. Now by saying clearly visible don’t go all out and use some flashy colors to get the point across, but rather using your color palette ensure that the information is prominent enough and can be easily seen on every page. This can be your phone number or email address or your contact page. You don’t need to have your full contact information visible throughout the website, that’s what contact page is for.
Clear messaging
Now this can be a bit tricky and might require help. As a business owner you know more about your business than your designer or your developer does. It’s your job to provide detailed information about your business, your process, services, and such. Typically you want to create an outline on per-page basis. Using the very same outline as your guide, provide the information necessary in a clear message. Nobody wants to wade through long paragraphs. Short, concise, straight to the point sentences optimized for easy reading are the key.
Prominent CTA
Each page should achieve a desired action. If you are providing free quotes and wish to drive more sales leads, what is your call to action? Many business owners rely on the visitors to click on the magic contact us button to get in touch. But why not provide your information and engage your visitors to request a call back? Call to action is very important on per-page basis to ensure that your website visitors don’t just read and leave your page, but get further information from you. It’s not just about having a website, it’s about having a successful website.