What Are the Secrets to Great Website Design?

It has been a decade since web design came about, but there is one thing that has remained constant: great web design is still a challenge to come by. It impacts everything from your website’s bounce rate to the chances of having repeat customers. There’s no need to hire a team of experts in order to start to get the benefits from good web design for your business. Use the following hints as a checklist. Consider how implementing them would look on your website as you read along.

What Are the Advantages of Good Web Design? 

For great web design, it is necessary to have a purpose. While it’s likely that the primary goal of your site is a marketing goal, can you take the time to clarify the goals you’re going to track? A brand awareness campaign is a very different type of program from a lead generation program. Your website may be more of an information-sharing destination, in which case your goals may not be marketing-focused at all. In any case, the first thing you need to do is set clear goals that are measurable; this is how you will determine whether your web design will be “great” or not at the end.

How Can Users Understand Your Mission? 

Does your company have a mission statement displayed on your website? It needs to be on your about page, and it needs to be one of the biggest considerations you make when it comes to web design. When brainstorming design ideas, take into account the language and tone you want to use.

Your mission statement is a statement of what you want to accomplish as a business and how you will do so. The way you develop and apply your mission statement to your design decisions is an understanding of how you will overcome your customer’s pain points. You only need to think about how you can use your website to satisfy the needs of the customer as you design and optimize it for your mission statement.

Your brand identity is one of the most valuable assets that you have.

Make it visible throughout your site to reap benefits like:

• Higher conversion rates
• Increased visitor engagement
• Credibility 
• Customer Loyalty
• Establishing brand recognition

Your brand name is more than just logos, graphics, and colors. Voice and tone, language, photos, attitude, storytelling. Apple or Harley: a serene minimalist or a brand that connotes freedom, fearlessness, and the lawlessness of just a little?Apple or Harley: a serene minimalist or a brand that has connotations of freedom, fearlessness, and, well, a little lawlessness? 

Don’t forget that there is a need for consistency when you aim to establish a brand-to-prospect relationship in your users’ minds.

What Is SEO? 

The output of the search algorithm is the search engine result pages (SERPs). The algorithm is used to retrieve the output information from the web through web crawlers. Crawlers traverse Web data to map and index it.

The algorithm is used when a user types a query into the search engine, and it compares the pages in the search engine’s indexes with the query. Then it ranks them on the SERP according to relevance.

Some of the ranking factors have to do with your website’s design, such as:

• Page organization
• Authority and credibility
• Readability
• Website architecture
• Mobile-friendliness
• Accessibility

Fortunately for businesses, the principles of SEO rankings for these factors are similar to those of quality web design. 

What Is Website Accessibility?

Follows Web accessibility guidelines to provide easy access to people with disabilities. This involves creating for people who are blind, have low vision, are deaf or hard of hearing, have motor disabilities, or have cognitive challenges. By incorporating accessibility principles into navigation and overall web design, websites become more user-friendly for a wider range of people, resulting in a better overall user experience. This can lead to increased engagement and conversion rates, as well as legal compliance with accessibility laws such as the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). Further, by using accessible design, websites are easier to use and more intuitive for all users, even for people without disabilities. Hence, it’s not only the right thing to do when making sure your website is accessible, but it’s the smart thing to do as well.

Why Is Photography Important in Web Design? 

Feelings should be an aspect of your website design. Imagery should be used to convey a story. Do you need to be convincing for a luxury or services site?

Photography should have uniform branding guidelines for:

• Emotion
• Color tone
• People 
• Call to actions

How Can Videos or Animation Improve Web Design? 

Invite visitors – 72% of people prefer watching videos about a product or service (HubSpot). Keep in mind the website loading speed when adding videos or animation. The excessive loading of GIFs, videos, and animations can make the website load faster, resulting in high user bounce rates.

The majority of people will bounce from a site that takes longer than 10 seconds to load, just to be extra sure that the YouTube video isn’t causing the load time to be extended. 

How Important Is a Simple Domain Name and URL? 

A quality domain is the easiest route to getting more traffic to your website, both from referrals and by boosting its shareability. Use an easy-to-remember, short, and simple domain name.

Ideally, your domain name should be 2-3 words in length. Even if the company name has more than 3 words, follow this rule!

The Potawatomi Hotel & Casino is a case in point. It is hard to remember and confusing to have the entire company name in the domain. The company reduced its domain name to ‘paysbig.com’. Potawatomi Hotel and Casino website is easy to find and memorable to come back to again. The short domain simplifies content sharing and tidies it up, making it easier and cleaner to share everywhere and all the time.

The photographs, text, and attitude in your business social media designs must be aligned with your brand, as explained above. One of the important aspects of web design is the consideration of making links shareable. After all, they call them pretty URLs for a reason!

When you create a new blog post, the URL is given a random tag – this depends on the content management system you’re using.  In the event you need to tell someone exactly which page to go to on a site, be it while on the telephone or while on the web, in a packed bar, or a buzzy conference, you should be able to. When you create your next website, consider creating your URLs HEF. 

But as a site owner, you’re probably looking for more attractive-looking URLs.  While Concrete works just fine, Pretty URLs make it possible to remove any garbled gook from the URLs for users and search engines.

Design and tailor links to your website pages according to your website structure and content. 

Why Is Writing for the Web Important?

When people are online, they are typically time-constrained and will skim, scan, or skim & scan your writing to find fast answers to their questions. You want to arrive at the point swiftly and with words you know- words that will be recognized by your reader. 

• Avoid acronyms and jargon. 
• Links should be accompanied by keywords and be descriptive.
• Organize your writing so that the most important information is first, followed by the details.
• Avoid lengthy paragraphs. 
• 2-3 sentences per paragraph is ideal, but can be more or less as needed. 

If you’re new to designing websites, you may not know the impact of content on marketing businesses online. Content is king. Content marketing is an integral component of web design, whether it is your social media or website blog.

Know your target audience’s search by researching and using search tools such as Google Trends, Google Search Console, SEMrush, etc. From there, it will be easier to create content for your target audience. 

Why Should You Plan Your Website Structure? 

One of the most effective tips for improving your website design is to create a simple hierarchy of your website navigation. It should be easy for visitors to scan your site and locate the information that they need without a lot of clicking around. To produce the best UX, there are three major changes that should be made.

The first thing you want to do is develop and streamline your site structure. Consider the broad areas into which you want to partition your site.

There are some popular options for businesses:

• Home
• Services
• Blog
• About
• Contact

Then, create all the pages under these and give them their respective address. This not only makes it easy for search engine crawlers to navigate your website but also for visitors. 

Why Must a Website Load Quickly? 

No matter what you’re trying to achieve, don’t fall into the trap of providing a lengthy, time-based design that’s too complex. Fast unlimited bandwidth isn’t everyone’s cup of tea these days, but everyone has a ton of other things clogging up their time. If your site is at all slow, you will lose traffic to your competitors.

What Makes a Website Mobile-Friendly?

The mobile browsing experience differs from desktop browsing, but so many businesses neglect to cater to the needs of mobile users. Try the new version 9 themes, which are mobile-ready.

Why Include Contact Information on the Table? 

No one will look for your contact details if they’re hidden on your website. You’re missing out on potential customers. Include contact details in a clear and visible area and make all calls to action go straight to this information.

How Does a Style Guide Improve Website Design? 

Finally, while on the web, a project that has been done can now be managed and continued with as a company or project progresses throughout the years by new web designers and developers. 

Creating some kind of documentation is crucial in order to maintain a consistent style and prevent parts of the work that were previously done from getting lost.  

How Do You Choose a Web Builder? 

A third of websites today (33.6%) are not built on a CMS. A third of websites today are not built using a CMS (33.6%).

Businesses use a tool called a content management system (CMS) to create, host, and manage their websites. When it comes to a CMS, you don’t have to choose between a few options. Picking the right one for you comes down to finding something within your budget.

Characteristics to be sought:

• Responsive layouts using templates.
• Video and image support is provided.
• Navigation menus
• Editing and customization
• Fillable forms
• Blog
• Security

If you are not getting a professional, then these are essential features. A poor-quality CMS should never be used to compromise the quality of your web design.

How Can You Launch Your Business Website? 

Many people are experts in website design. But start-ups and small businesses can’t always find a place in their budget to hire a professional. That’s where we can come in handy.

Concrete CMS is a complete integrated web design and hosting solution for businesses and individuals. When you are ready to begin the design enhancements, we’ll help you through it. Call us today to find out more.

Frequently Asked Questions