Why Professional Website Design Matters to Your Business
by Ben Wilson on April 27th, 2017
Your website might be filled with stellar content, but if the design isn't appealing, prospective customers are likely to glance at it and move on to competitor sites.
The code behind your site might be elegant and complex, but if the layout is confusing and your visitors get lost, none of that matters.
Amazing visual appeal alone isn't enough to keep visitors on your site or convert visitors to customers. Individuals come to your website to accomplish something. They want to learn about your products or services, gain information or complete a specific task. If your website design doesn't allow them to accomplish what they set out to do, they'll just move on.
This means that your website's imagery, text and navigation must combine seamlessly to allow users to get what they want effortlessly and intuitively. When you take advantage of great website design services, you help customers succeed, which in turn helps your business succeed.
So what does it mean to have state-of-the-art professional website design? Take a look at some of the current best practices regarding website design.
Best Practices for Website Design
On-trend.
Design trends come and go, and if you want your visitors to feel that your business keeps up, your site must reflect the latest design elements. Look for parallax scrolling, a design device in which images and headlines are put into motion as you view them, with foreground and background images moving at different rates. Vertical scrolling also opens up the site and draws the user in.
Responsiveness.
When a website design is mobile responsive, it can be viewed equally well on any device, with the users getting the same experience whether they visit your site on their smartphones, laptops or tablets. Responsive websites require flexible images, flexible grids and screen resolution options that adapt to the device being used. Without responsive design, your business could easily lose up to 30 percent of its visitors due to a poor browsing experience. This number grows significantly when you consider the traffic that does not reach your site due to poor organic search visibility.
White Space.
It can be tempting to pack every square pixel of your website with information and images, as if it were an old school newspaper. However, professional website designers know that white space is a must-have when it comes to good design. Readers react differently to content on a screen than in print, and white space has an emotional effect that allows key elements of your content to pop.
Ease of Navigation.
A frightening number of the visitors to any website bounce away within seconds if they don't see what they're looking for immediately. Best practice website design call for user-friendly homepage navigation via clear and appropriate messages that get users to where they want to go within those first few seconds.
Clear Typography.
In recent years, it's become easy to load your website with all kinds of striking fonts and typography choices. However, all those fonts aren't necessarily doing you a favor. The widened arena of font choices means that an experienced design eye is even more crucial to make sure your selections of size, color and font are appropriate to your site's personality and goals.
A Cohesive Personality.
If you're selling craft supplies, your website demands a different personality than a website advertising pest control services or a landing page for an estate lawyer. Pay attention to the fine details of your custom website design to send the emotional message you want. Even your 404 (error) pages can convey the right message — or the wrong one.
At Web Force 5, we pride ourselves on the use of great website design, ease of use and built-in functionality. We provide an intuitive content management system that functions easily and is customised for each website we build. Get in touch with us to find out how we can use website design best practices to help your business shine online.