Whether you like it or not, when your customers visit your website, they will judge how it looks. It only takes about 0.05 seconds for people to make an opinion about your web design.
Also Read: UI UX Design Principles
One glance and they already have an impression on the quality of your business. It’s tough, but that’s how it works.
If your website is poorly developed and full of grammatical errors, they won’t take you seriously. In fact, 38% of your customers will leave your website if they don’t find it appealing. And this is bad for your credibility.
After all, user experience should be your number one priority when designing your website.
For that reason, we’ll be helping you achieve the best for your website. Here are some tips on how to improve your website design.
Ways to Improve Your Website Design
1. Have a style guide made available
If you want to change the icons on your website, you need to have a content management system (CMS). But if you don’t have a CMS, it’s best to hire a web design agency. With these companies, you’ll be getting the best of both worlds:
- You’ll be saving time and money, and
- You’ll be having a high-quality, reliable, and responsive website.
But if you’re planning on designing your website, you won’t only be hiring one agency, but multiple of them. One web development company cannot handle such a complex project. In addition to that, expect that you’ll be needing to modify some aspects of your website in the future.
With this, you need to have a reference guide. That’s why you need a style guide to communicate to them what you want for your website. This will also help you maintain consistency and cohesiveness across all platforms. This, in turn, increases brand awareness and user satisfaction.
2. Undergo website assessment and competitor analysis
Nothing is perfect, and neither is your website.
Even though you partnered with the best web design agency, some errors are unavoidable.
The best way to learn what your website lacks or has too much of is by assessing your website. Are the links you put functional? Do they redirect you to the right pages? Is your website secure?
These are some of the questions you need to know while undergoing a full website assessment.
And while you’re at it, you can research your competitors’ websites. If you can find your competitors within the first page of Google, then there’s a reason for it. A good one.
It’s not wrong to check what content they put and how users navigate through their website. It is even advisable that you do competitor analysis before you design your own website. You will gain insight into what has been done by other companies, and what you could do to make yours better.
3. Have it made mobile-friendly
There are about 4 billion web users who access the internet via mobile devices. Why wouldn’t they? Mobile phones are handy. Plus, they can surf the internet anywhere they go.
But navigating through mobile phones is hard, especially for non-mobile-friendly websites. All those tiny letters partnered with long paragraphs. It makes it seem boring to read. Users end up looking for a website that has a mobile version, instead.
Last 2015, Google changed its mobile search ranking algorithms. They started prioritizing mobile-friendly websites for mobile searches. This means that companies with a website optimized for mobile use are placed on top of mobile users’ search lists.
These are the exact reasons why you should make your website mobile-friendly. It’s not only good for your business, but it’s also good for your SEO.
4. Improve your website’s speed
Sometimes, the internet is to be blamed for when a web page doesn’t load right away. And sometimes, it’s your website’s design.
You only have 5 seconds for your website to load before your customers get impatient. If they do, they’ll find other websites that load faster than yours. It’s even more crucial to think there is a delay in your webpage’s loading during a transaction. A 2-second delay usually keeps your customer from continuing the transaction.
While you ponder the implication of that, we listed here ways on how to optimize your website’s speed:
- Compress your visual elements (images, GIFs)
- Limit your redirect links
- Optimize your icons and fonts
- Don’t use heavy animations
You can search for tools that can help you with this list.
5. Make navigation simple
It’s true that you need to provide a link for every page on your website. But if you’re going to cramp those links in one place, then it’s not good practice.
You should look at your navigation bar like a map. If there is so much information on it, people will get overwhelmed and have a hard time finding what they’re looking for. A simplified navigation bar helps your users get around your site easily.
So it’s best to keep these tips in mind:
- Don’t put too many categories on your navigation bar. 7 should be the max number.
- Use descriptions to your labels as much as possible
- Don’t use company jargon your users won’t understand.
- Have your navigation bar fixed. It can be annoying to accidentally have it drop-down when users are reading your content.
Sometimes, simplicity is best.
6. White space isn’t as bad as you think it is
Although the name suggests it, white space doesn’t have to be white. It’s really just the space on your website that does not have any visual item on it. Most business owners don’t feel the need for this. But, it actually improves the design of your website.
Leaving margins on your site allows you to highlight important information that you want your customers to know. It also helps with users’ navigation. Without any white space on your website, visitors will feel overwhelmed by the density of information and graphics you have.
Give your elements room to breathe. Evaluate which information is needed on a specific page. And limit the number of images you have on one page!
7. Just enough graphics will do
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. And it’s true!
If you’re struggling to put all of the information on one page, then a good graphic design will solve it. It’s important that you can summarize information using an infographic. It is also a way to attract your customers and increase their readability.
But having too many of them can be overwhelming. Consider these tips on how many graphics you should use per word count:
- If a page has 500 words, you need to have at least 1 graphic.
- If it has 2,500 words and above, you need to have at least 3-5 graphics.
Remember that your visual designs are there to support your content, not replace them.
8. Utilize social media sharing
You’re already on the internet. Take advantage of social media. If we’re going to look at the numbers, there are about 3.6 billion people who are on social media. And looking at monthly active users, 2.8 billion are active on Facebook, and 1.3 billion on Instagram.
It’s a mistake not to put sharing buttons on your website.
If you’re not familiar with it, it’s those little social media icons that can be found mostly in blog posts. This is important so that when users like your blog post content, they can easily share them. This often helps attract other users who follow your current customers. Thus, increasing brand awareness and web traffic.
Conclusion
The main purpose of creating a website for your business is to provide information to your prospective customers. Following this, a great website is user experience-centered. According to Statista, 83% of businesses have their own website in the UK alone.
Just imagine how many competitors you’ll be having on the internet!
That’s why you should never stop improving your websites to achieve the best of them. Also, don’t forget to look for the latest web design trends. It’s one of the things that make your business stand out.
