Web design is an essential component of any online marketing plan. It has a significant influence on the digital consumer experience in various ways. The aesthetics, usability, and other features of your website are critical to your company’s long-term online success.
How much does it impact your bottom line? In this post, we’ll look at four important areas of web design and how to enhance them all.
1. Appearance
Your visitors’ consumer experience begins the moment they click on your website. Ensuring that your first impression is not your last is the idea here. You want to pique the visitors’ interest and encourage them to explore your site further.
Of course, nothing complicated is required for the appearance to function. However, you must remain abreast and provide them with what they want to see. You can’t expect someone to spend time on a website that appears like it went live in 2006 and hasn’t changed since.
Here are some things you should implement on your website:
- Responsive Design – your website must appear good on all devices.
- Visible Fonts – everything must be easy to read, so don’t choose your typefaces haphazardly.
- Captivating Images – these should draw attention and increase retention.
- Video – a good video is often all that is required to convert a lead into a customer.
2. Clarity
Your web design must be clear in its purpose. The last thing you want is your visitors leaving your site without understanding what you do.
There are a few things you can do to make sure your message is heard.
- Use Simple Language – don’t sound too fancy or use jargon that people might not understand. Be straightforward about what you do and what you offer.
- Clearly state your value proposition – tell your target audience what they can expect from your product or service and why they should choose you over the competition. They should see what you offer the first time they visit your site.
- Make It Easy to Navigate – your website visitors should be able to find their way around your site easily and intuitively. If they cannot, they will quickly get frustrated and leave.
3. Professionalism
In order for people to take your comapny seriously, you website must look professional. It doesn’t mean it has to be boring, just that it should look trustworthy.
Here are some things you can do to make your site look professional.
- Use a Reasonable Amount of White space – don’t cram too much information into one page. Use white space to break up text and make it easier to read.
- Choose an Appropriate Colour Scheme – your colours should be professional and subdued, not neon and bright.
- Avoid Flashy Animations – these can distract and make your site look amateurish.
- Add customer testimonials – testimonials are super important as they give the final push for your website visitors to buy your product or service. Testimonials also help build trust.
4. User Engagement
You can have the best-looking site in the world, but if people don’t stick around to interact with it, it won’t do you any good. That’s why user engagement is such an important part of web design. You need to make sure that people are actually going to want to spend time on your site.
There are a few key things you can do to improve user engagement:
- Make It Easy to Use – people should be able to figure out how to use your site with no instruction. If they can’t, they’ll quickly get frustrated and leave.
- Add Interactive Elements – adding things like polls, surveys, and quizzes can help to keep people engaged with your site.
- Include Social Media Buttons – make it easy for people to share your content by including social media sharing buttons on your blog posts. Do not add too many social media buttons, as you do not want your website visitors to leave your site. We recommend adding them to your header or footer.
5. Conversions
Making sure your website converts is one of the most important aspects of your website design. You cannot convert anyone without first getting people to your website and making them stay long enough to convert.
- Here are a few key features you need to pay close attention to:
- Make your website fast – people are busy and they do not have time to wait for your website to load. The faster your website loads, the more likely users are to convert.
- Add clear Call-To-Actions – you need to make sure the CTAs you include in your web design are effective. We recommend adding call-to-actions at the end of each blog post and landing pages.
- Drive visitors along a specific path – one of the biggest mistake you can do, is to give too many choices for your visitors. Your website needs to have a clear and easy user experience, think thoroughly about what action you want your target audience to take, and make sure you design the customer journey with that in mind.
Final Thoughts
Web design is a critical part of any digital marketing strategy. By improving all the aspects we’ve discussed, you can ensure that your site is looking its best and that people are actually spending time on it.
Improve your business’s online presence with the help of We Are Innovative. We are a digital marketing and web design agency that provides affordable web design in Southampton. We specialise in building stunning WordPress websites and eCommerce sites. Get in touch with us today!