Your business website is not just another web property. It represents your brand in the online arena.
It’s so important that it won’t be wrong to say that a business’ reputation highly depends on its website. Every single element of a website including design, page speed, font and even the background colour matters and forms an impression on any visitor. This impression decides if the user will stay or bounce.
This makes a good design crucial for your website.
But how to do it? What kind of website is your best bet? Which website design should you pick?
Well, if you are looking for answers, this is the right place for you.
Which Website Design Style Should You Go For?
As website design plays an important role in a business’ online growth, it is really important to choose the correct design for your site.
A website selling a physical product can’t have design of a website selling software services.
So, it depends on the industry and product?
Absolutely! The first factor to decide your website design is your niche.
And if you are wondering, niche is the industry which your website functions in. The audience it targets, the product it sells, all of these combine to depict a niche.
And how does it affect your website’s design?
Let us take a small example. Can you imagine Facebook or YouTube with Ebay’s interface? Does it appeal enough? Will it be a good switch?
Eh. Not really!
The reason is the niche. Ebay is an e-commerce website.
Its purpose is to sell goods. Its design consists of elements that are a perfect fit for an e-commerce website. The way it displays products. Advanced search features. A product cart. A wishlist. All of it is about e-commerce.
While, talking of Facebook. It is a social networking website. You get online. Make new friends. Meet your older friends too. Talk to them. Share information. Or maybe even use Facebook for business.
The point remains the same. These are two different websites functioning in different niches, catering different audience interests.
And that is how it works. So, you know, to find out the correct website design you first need to know your niche.
What to do next?
Okay. So, you know your niche. Now what?
Well, this is the time you research and try to come up with ideas for a good website design for your website referring to your niche.
So, start off with research.
Find out about your niche. Aware yourself of the suppliers. Customers. Flaws. Profits. Losses. Everything that you can.
Once that’s done, make a list of your 20 competitors and analyze everything about them. Know their qualities. Shortcomings. What similarities they have? What sets them apart?
Just find it all out. This will give you an idea about the elements that you should include in your website. Also, you can try out some good color schemes from these websites.
The aim is to find out what might work for your website and what will not.
Also, know that niche is one major factor which a website’s design highly depends on. Depending on your niche, which website design style elements should your website have?
Answer follows in the next section.
Website design style elements you must go for!
Every business website has certain design elements. And then depending on the niche, as mentioned above website designs can widely vary.
This means that any business website ever to be built needs to have certain design elements.
Be it for an e-commerce website or for a website selling internet or software services. Some elements are really important and will always be.
Here, I am mentioning those elements.
1. Clear and Crisp Calls-to-Action
The purpose of having a business website is to generate leads or sales through it.
Calls-to-action aid to fulfilling that purpose. Users visiting your site come across a number of elements.
These elements combine to cast an impression that makes the users leave or move ahead in the sales funnel. And the CTA here acts as a door to cross the first step of this funnel.
This means that if your CTA is inadequate, the user wouldn’t move beyond the first step. Result? Poor CTR and lesser leads.
To solve this problem, you need to come up with a better CTA. And what does it comprise?
Well, the definition of a good CTA varies from niche to niche.
An e-commerce website will have a CTA saying Buy Now, Order Now, Book Now or something on the same lines. The purpose here is to make a direct sale.
So, the use of contrasting colours making the CTA vibrant enough will be required. You can even consider evoking a sense of urgency in your visitors. This will just enable your CTA a little more towards performing better for your e-commerce website.
While, when we talk of CTAs on websites selling services or collecting leads, the whole deal will vary. The colours of CTA might have to be toned down. CTA copy would need to be changed.
For example, Read More, Buy Now, Book Now might not always work for a website selling services.
In-fact, the truth is that ‘Read more ‘will inflict a sense of asking some work. And, let’s be honest! Who wants work?
So, think through your website. Come up with good ideas. Plan your CTAs well and implement.
And even after that, keep tweaking your CTAs. Because, it is always about getting better than yesterday.
2. An adequate Search bar
The next thing that every business website must have is a ‘Search Bar’.
And hey! You might have heard that having a search bar on the landing pages results in lower conversion rates. It’s no myth.
When you place a search bar on your important landing pages, you give your visitors an option to leave your landing page without clicking on your CTA. Eh’! That’ll harm.
That’s why, here I am talking about having a search bar for the rest of your pages.
This is how you expose your user base to the content on your website.
Now, again the type of search bar you use will depend on the type of website that you are building i.e., the niche.
For example, a software services website or a blog can go well with a normal search bar. People come to the website. Read an article. Want to know more about something else. Type in the search box and hit enter.
Ta-Da! The results are here.
While, when planning an e-commerce website you will have to work-up your search bar a little more.
Do you know about Advanced search? Have you ever shopped online? (obviously you have) If yes, then you sure have used advanced search.
Every e-commerce website these days has this feature. For a better understanding, look at the example image below.
The one highlighted in red here is the advanced search menu on Amazon.com. This came up for the search term ‘Nokia’.
Basically, it is a search menu which lets you further categorize your search on the basis of your buying priorities.
Seems cool, doesn’t it? Well, your users will think the same about an advanced search menu on your e-commerce website.
3. Easy to use Navigation Menu
Website navigation is very important for online success.
Search engines say it, marketers say it and so do the users. A website without navigation will make the users feel lost.
Think for yourself, how would you feel about landing on a website with no or poor navigation.
Just as the search bar, excluding the navigation menu from the
landing pages can be a good idea but for the other pages, it is really important.
And just as for the other elements, navigation menu also varies from niche to niche.
Talking about the idea of navigation menu that you should pick for your website depends on the kind of website you are building.
Although, all of it stays on the lines of listing categories on the basis of importance of their respective content. You can still skim down the content in the navigation menu depending on your niche.
For example, we know an e-commerce website would normally have a number of categories to be added in the menu. While a normal blog will have fewer items. Mainly the categories with the highest user engagement rate or potential to perform.
Final words
Talking of website design style, every website deserves to be unique.
While different design elements set every site apart, a few elements make them similar too. These elements are the ones which every website should have.
We tried to list those in the article above. Hopefully this helped you understand website design better.
If you have any comments or suggestions, we are always open for those.
