Keep a clear strategy and plan for website design!

You have started a business and are planning to have a well-designed and professional website, so you have to follow some basic logical tips. Whenever it comes to a website design, you should keep in mind that you are going to position your business in online world for which you should be clear in mind about what your target market expects from you and what are their preferences when they consider a website. Your website represents your brand, so it has to be as good as your products and if you maintain website competently, it can significantly share your burden of sales & marketing efforts.

Following are some best practices needed to follow when designing a website

Brand Image

As discussed above the website design reflects your brand, so it needs to form an image that you want your customers to form. Website generates first impression of your brand hence you need to make your website apparently looks classy, sophisticated and up to date. You need to make sure that whatever content is present on your website is projecting the same message and is relevant to what your business is. This should be portrayed by using relevant images/icons appearing on your website.

Easy Navigation

Navigation of a website should be easy and uncluttered. If the website is slow in navigation, visitors may feel reluctant to use it. You can add custom navigation to your website design that allows you to go for unique icons and design because there may already be several websites similar to your business. Yours need to stand out!

Add Relevant Content

The content or text you put on your website is very important. Because this text tells customers about you and your services, so you need to make sure you add content which is best describing your business. You can post related images, videos and teasers during website design to attract your visitors.

Use Responsive Layout

Website design today at pre-formulated structures which enables the designer to save time and work efficiently on layout. This flexibility has solved the problem of responsiveness of a website. Your website design should be responsive enough to run or open with ease at any electronic device including laptop, iPad and smart phones as the majority of users nowadays use hand held devices to surf the internet.

Add Call to Action Button

Call to Action buttons have become mandatory for today’s business because they elicit response from your customer and play a key role in generating leads. Your CTA should be simple and easy to locate on your website specially for shopping cart websites. Designers add creativity in the CTA by changing their shape, color, character or adding animation. Read more about the role of Call to Action in website design on my post here.

Integrate Social Media

In order to build your online presence and interact with your customers, you have to integrate social media icons in your website design. This integration connects you with your customers at their social sites where they can share your content and suggest your brand to their friends.

Display Your Products/Services

Whatever kind of business you are involved in, it is essential to showcase your offerings so that your customers can gain a feel of what they would be getting. It gives an idea of your work and helps your customers to evaluate your products/services with the ones offered by your competitors. It is important that you showcase yours in the most efficient way.

Consider Compliance

Your website needs to meet some standard guidelines that mean you have to write code which is specified and have standard format. Make sure you have included copyrights where it is necessary. This also includes compressing images for best viewing, removing unnecessary coding and updating plug-ins (if any).

Maintain Consistency

An up to date website always gains more attraction and reflects positively on the company. You have to make sure you maintain consistency in updating your pages/social media etc. so that will not disengage your visitors from the website.

Go for Search Engine Optimization

Your website will be of no use if it is not optimized or is ranked too far on the search engine. Optimize your keywords, title, Meta data and images through on page and off page optimization. Apply SEO tools for example Google analytics to track performance and evaluate traffic coming to your website. From this you can assess that from which source the maximum traffic is reaching to you.

Well that’s not all from the best practices, there is much more to it; however, for the basics, these tips are important to know and apply. Later on, you can learn more ways and tips of website designing, implication of which helps you to stay ahead in the race.