Website designers have to consider several factors while building a website as it has to generate trust among visitors and encourage them to take action. A website is effective only if it creates an excellent user experience, which means that it should be attractive and easy to use.
Here are the great features of a good website design:
Serves the Purpose
Great websites give visitors something of value. They use simple but effective language and convey their message clearly on all their pages.
Your website should answer the following questions:
You may have unique reasons to build a website, but almost all websites serve the purpose of describing their owners’ expertise in a particular field, establishing their reputation, selling products, and generating leads.
Creates Great User Experience
A great website has a simple design because it focuses on creating a great user experience. The designer works on colours, imagery, typography, and other elements to make the website visually appealing and easy to use.
Talented web designers choose their colours carefully as colours quietly convey several messages and evoke a variety of emotions among users. Choose colours that suit your brand and avoid using too many colours. Experts recommend not more than five colours in your website design.
Make sure that your colours complement one another as a visually pleasing colour combination makes users comfortable, relaxed, happy, and more receptive to the message you wish to convey.
Talented web designers also pay attention to typography as it grabs visitors’ attention and lets them know what the brand is all about. The type, therefore, is the voice of your brand. Keep your type simple and easy to view. Also, avoid using more than three types of fonts on your website.
Web imagery is just as important as typography and colour scheme. Imagery includes illustration, photography, pictures, videos, and all varieties of graphics. They are a powerful way of communicating with visitors. Choose expressive imagery that is capable of reflecting the spirit of your brand. Pay special attention to it as it is the first thing visitors see.
Easy to Navigate
Visitors can easily find all the information they are looking for on a good website. That’s why web designers make navigation as easy, consistent, and intuitive as possible. Your visitor will leave your website in no time if he/she finds it confusing and difficult to navigate.
Well-arranged Elements
All the elements of a good website are arranged in order of their importance. Web designers achieve this through typography, size, contract, imagery, whitespace, style, texture, and colour. This ensures that visitors view the most important information first.
Quick to Load
Visitors have no patience with websites that take ages to load. This is how most badly designed websites lose their visitors. Visitors want websites to load in a few seconds. Studies have shown that nobody has the patience to wait for more than a few seconds for a website to load.
Compatible with Smartphones and Tablets
The best websites are those that are compatible with smartphones and tablets. Visitors love websites that they can access not only on desktops but also smartphones and tablets. While creating a website, therefore, use a layout that enables the website to adjust to different devices and screens.
Great Content
The best websites present valuable content that informs, entertains, and educates. Players return to websites that give them something of value. Great websites also update their content regularly, weeding outdated stuff and uploading the latest news, views, analyses, and opinions.
Avoid loading your website with boring chunks of text. Instead, make it exciting by adding relevant videos, images, illustrations, and photographs. Include plenty of white space to make it visually pleasing and readable.
Highly Visible
You may create the best website in the world, but it is of no use if nobody finds it. You have to promote your website through regular digital marketing through search engine optimized (SEO) content, email campaigns, and social networking sites.
Use every technique available to make your website visible to search engines so that visitors can easily find it and purchase your products and services.
Engaging and Interactive
Great websites actively interact with their audience. They capture attention and encourage response and action. Websites incapable of getting visitors to take action don’t serve their purpose. After all, you have created a website not just to attract visitors but also to convert them into loyal customers, who visit often, tell others about it, purchase your products, and use your services.
Are you interested in building a website that has all the above-mentioned features? Here is a simple guide to making your website great:
List Your Goals – Make it very clear to yourself why you want to build a website. What purpose do you want it to achieve?
Create Content – Decide what you want to say through your website. Although you are the best person to create content for your website, you can hire a good writer to create the required content. Let him/her know exactly what message you wish to convey.
Communicate with Customers – If you want to sell products and services through your website, inform your customers exactly why they should buy.
Include a Call to Action – Encourage your customers to take the desired action. Do you want them to purchase a product or a service package or sign up for your newsletter? Tell them to do it.
Hire a Professional – If you aren’t a professional web designer, don’t hesitate to hire a professional. Doing it yourself (DIY) when you aren’t sure how to do it is frustrating and time-consuming. What’s more, the result won’t be satisfactory.
Avoid Freebies – Avoid freebies like free themes and free templates for your website. They may not be as safe and secure as paid ones. Also, they may hold advertisements that you don’t want to show on your website.
Include Your Contact Details – Establish a relationship of trust with your website visitors by including your contact details and encouraging them to get in touch with you. Depending on your convenience, you may include your physical address, phone number, social networking accounts, email address, and so on. Visitors always feel comfortable with website owners who choose not to stay anonymous.
Finally, keep learning new things and growing. You are free to change your website design as your business develops. There is always room for change, improvement, and development.