You cannot physically see your customers when you do business online, unlike with a traditional brick-and-mortar company. This means customers judge you by your appearance and as an online business, your website is your business.
Online business revolves around your website. Regardless of whether you have a physical location, it represents your company virtually. It is important to have a professional website design because a great design gives you a competitive edge.
Consider how things would be if you run a store – when dealing with your customers, will your salespeople be dressed in shabby or casual clothes? Your customers will know you care about quality when you make your staff wear professional clothing. Simply put, first impressions last.
The same applies to your website. You are telling your visitors that you are not professional and you do not care about quality if your website is shabbily designed and looks like it was thrown together in 5 minutes.
A professional-looking website, on the other hand, gives the impression that you have given meticulous attention to every detail and care about professionalism. The impression is that you are focused, organized, and you mean business.
Make sure your website’s navigation is clear.
You should have a clear and concise navigation menu so that visitors can navigate your website easily.
Don’t overwhelm your website with images.
Most often they are completely unnecessary and cause your site to load very slowly. Make sure you use image editing programs to reduce the file size of any images you think are essential for your site.
Paragraph length should be reasonable.
To keep text blocks from becoming too large, you should split long paragraphs into smaller ones. Text blocks that are too large will prevent visitors from reading your content because they won’t be able to read it.
Ensure that your website adheres to web standards.
You can use tools to verify that they meet search engine optimization standards and are compatible across browsers and mobile devices. If your website performs well in Google Chrome but breaks badly in Firefox and Opera, you will lose a lot of potential customers.
Avoid using scripting languages unless it is an absolute necessity.
Scripting languages are used to handle and manipulate data, not to create visual effects on your website. Your website will take longer to load if you use heavy scripts. Some browsers may even crash as a result.
Additionally, scripts are not supported by all browsers, so some visitors might miss important information. You can save a great deal of time styling your page content with CSS because it styles all your website elements together at once.
For your website to perform optimally and serve its purpose, extra attention should be paid to every detail. To ensure that your website performs well, follow these five tips.
1) Splash pages are not recommended
Websites usually have splash pages that appear at the top of the page. There is usually a very beautiful image with words such as “welcome” or “click here to enter”. Their actual function is merely decorative – they are just pretty vases with no real meaning.
Present the value of your site up front without requiring them to click a link. Avoid giving your visitors a reason to click the “back” button!
2) Do not overuse banner ads
It has become second nature for even the least tech-savvy people to ignore banner advertisements, so you’ll be wasting valuable website real estate. Don’t force your visitors to buy; instead, provide more valuable content with relevant affiliate links and let your visitors buy on their terms instead of being pushed
3) Make navigation simple and clear
The navigation menu needs to be simple and easy to use so that even a young child can navigate it. Avoid complicated Flash-based menus and multi-tiered drop-down menus. Visitors won’t stay on your site if they’re not able to find what they’re looking for.
4) Give a clear indication of where the user is
In the course of browsing your site, you will want to make sure your visitors know which part of the site they are in at the moment. In this way, they can easily navigate to any part of the site or browse relevant information. Confusing your visitors will result in them abandoning your site!
5) Avoid using audio on your website
You will want to be sure your visitor is not annoyed by some audio looping on and off your website if they are going to spend a lot of time reading your content. Be sure to give them some control over the audio, such as volume or muting controls if you insist on adding it.
The website is the head office for your business!
Therefore, it is important to utilize good design principles to make sure your site makes a good first and lasting impression. This is one of the easiest to make sure that it reaches the maximum number of visitors and sells as many of your products/services as possible.
If you are looking for a professional web design agency with years of experience, then you will not be wrong to choose Critical IT Group for all your web design needs.
Feel free to find out more about our web design services or if you’re ready to proceed then give us a call or submit an inquiry today!
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