When you decide to create a website, you want to consider what you want your website to look like and what you want it to accomplish based on who it will serve.
You want your site to look good and attractive to your readers or users and encourage them to take some type of action.
Your website exists to get people’s attention and encourage them to do something! Whether it’s to hire you, buy your services or products, enroll in your course, or subscribe to your email list. And good design is crucial to get your reader to take the action you want.
A poorly thought-out designed website does not attract readers. Studies have shown that you only have a few seconds to keep your reader attention and get them to explore further, or they’re off looking for another site to resolve a problem or satisfy the reason they came to your website.
In this blog post, I will give you seven fundamental design elements you should consider for your website to help it better serve your readers.
- Keep your homepage simple and to the point.
Your website’s homepage gives the first impression to your reader. Get it wrong here, and you’ve lost them. Again, keep your homepage simple and to the point. A short headline, a brief description, two or three calls to action (buy, register, sign-up) and an image or video to make it clear what your business offers. Not a lot of ads. A clear statement on what your website will provide.
- Keep your website clean and uncluttered.
Your website should look clean and uncluttered. Lots of space will make it easier for readers to focus on your message and navigate around your site. Space is not necessarily white space, it indicates a lack of visual clutter and can be any color or texture you like, although studies have shown that people prefer lighter colors in website design.
- Make your website easy to move around.
Nothing is more frustrating than a website that is difficult to navigate! A site that’s easier to find your way around will mean that users stay longer. So, keep menus to a minimum and make sure labels are clear to the non-technical user. Make some basic pieces of information like contact details, shipping and business hours easy to find.
- Provide an about you and company pages.
Include information on an About Us page that includes a brief profile of you, your business partners and staff. Keep it simple and straightforward and include photos.
- Look good!
Think of what attracts you to certain websites. What colors and fonts do they use? What do their images tell you? Having great evocative images is better than having lots of images – and custom images that show your products, your people, and your branding are much better than using stock images. You want to stand out! And if your website branding is looking a bit tired, it might be a good opportunity to have a total revamp of your business’ image.
- Responsive Design
With all the devices being used to access the web, it is important to create a site that is viewable on any mobile device. The percentage of mobile device users on the internet continue to grow. Mobile usage is more than 63% of all traffic in the US. Based on that, it seems likely that it will reach a full 2/3 of all traffic by the end of 2018.
- Relevant Calls-to-Action
A stated earlier it is important to know what your site is supposed to accomplish. A call to action is one way you can track the value of your website. Call to action can be reader subscription, a purchase, a coaching call or just a comment request for engagement.
In this blog post, I have given you seven fundamental design elements you should consider for your website to help it better serve your readers and help you accomplish your website goals. And I hope this will help you analyze your site and make the changes if needed.
Leave a comment if you have additional design elements that were not mentioned.
