Your company website is an important part of your business. It offers online customers a way to connect with your company. Having a well designed website that is search-engine friendly and easy to navigate is important. The purpose of your website can be informational or it can be used to market your products or services.
Do not mistakenly assume that you can get by with a sub-standard website. A lot of time, energy, and resources should be spent in the creation of a quality website that can represent your company accurately.
Whether you're building a website from scratch or are involved in redesigning your existing site, there are three simple approaches to consider:
- Do the work yourself
- Hire the services of a professional web design agency
- Use templates to build a cookie-cutter site
Usually, the time and money you are willing to invest in your website will be your option. All these choices can be a intimidating if you have never built a website before.
The best option is to employ a competent web design agency if you have a relatively large budget. This allows you to get a completely customized web pages that help to create a a great online impression for your product.
If you wish to save money then you have the option of building the website yourself. Nonetheless, bear in mind that, before you can build a page that represents your company properly, you will need to spend a lot of time learning about web design.
The third option would be to use a template especially if you are using WordPress. There are a lot of free and paid templates available online.
This solution could be easy and cost-effective as well as a good choice for every company. You can take advantage of a professional website without paying an exorbitant price. Templates also speed up the process to make it practically easy to upload your site.
Here you will find exclusive web design tips for enhancing your website and helping you to boost your business.
1. Elements of Excellent Web Design
Although you may have no web design experience, it is not difficult to recognize good web design. When you create your page from scratch or use templates, please keep in mind these four essential design components:
- A well-defined grid structure
- Intuitive navigation
- A professional design
- A mobile-friendly layout and features
Each of these topics is discussed further with the following website design tips so that you can comprehend their critical role in good design.
2. A Well-Defined Grid Structure
If you hear the term "grid layout," it applies specifically to the way the site itself is constructed. You can see this as the foundation of the site. The same fundamental concept is used in painting and photography as well. The design appears perfectly if the grid layout is correctly done. The website of Apple the technology giant is a good example of a website designed around a smooth, consistent grid structure. All you have to do is see how the the page is arranged to display the underlying grid structure. Does every side of the page have equal margins? Is every part of the page equal to the other sections of the page? How does it differentiate the content? If you look at these characteristics you can spot the grid.
You can choose from several different grid configurations. Determine which grid layout you should use by looking at professionally designed sites. For example, some websites have a basic structure of four columns, while others have a standard structure of 12 columns. The correct structure of the grid can really change the appearance of your website design.
3. Intuitive Navigation
This is one of the most important part of designing websites; because your guests need to navigate your website quickly. If your visitors cannot figure how to find the correct information, they will leave your website. This is why a website design should include a simple and easy navigation as one its highest priorities. Start with a navigational structure that is easy to understand for your content.
First, describe the steps that you want customers to take after landing on your website. Then create a menu that will help them to quickly find the information they need. On the New Yorker website is a great example of good navigation. The browser bar is easy to read and quick. The page also uses buttons to make finding the material easy for visitors.
Ensure that your website navigation is viewable also on mobile devices. It is important to ensure that mobile users can easily access the content besides desktop users. Ask any SEO company and they will tell you how important it is to have a mobile website for high search engine rankings.
4. Have Consistent Branding
Your website design must be consistent with your company branding. A visitor can immediately recognize your business when they land on your website. When building your brand, consistency is important. This means that you use the same color scheme throughout your website and the color scheme should match your logo.
As an example, design should not conflict with readability of your content by having a background that does not contrast with the font. It is most important to ensure that your visitors can read the content on your pages easily.
What really matters is that your visitors should be interested enough in your website. They are likely to leave if they don't have a good experience. Worse yet, they will probably not return. It is therefore important, when designing your website, that the overall user experience is your top priority.
Look no further than the Y-7 Yoga website to see an excellent example of branding. They have candles and use chants influenced by hip-hop music in their yoga studios. This creates consistency between the online experience and personal experience, which helps to strengthen the brand of the company.
5. Make Your Site Mobile-Friendly
One of the most important things you can do when you build a website is to make it easily accessible for mobile users. More than half of the visitors use mobile devices to access the Internet. That's why ensuring that your page looks great on smartphones and tablets is absolutely essential.
I hope that the above tips about websites will help you create a website that not only looks great but gives your customers a great experience.
