Best Practices For Improving Your Web Design
When designing your websites, there are things you need to take care of to make sure you can ensure the high customer or site visitor retention. It’s believed that in about five seconds, any visitor to your site has already decided whether they can trust your brand and website or not.
The challenge then is whether your online site is designed to be impactful from the first seconds of interaction between it and your visitors. You might have already noticed an unusually high bounce rate and need to go back to the drawing board and map a way forward.
You’ll need to make improvements in your website design to increase your website’s power. Here are some of these best practices as you try to improve your site:
- It Should Be Mobile-Friendly And Responsive
This should be the first thing you fix if it’s not already there on your website. You should make sure that your site is mobile-friendly and responsive. Failure to have this function will not only lead to top search engine platforms dropping you in their search results rankings, but it also means that visitors will bounce as long as they were trying to do this from a mobile phone.
Considering that most people in any market segment will typically opt to use mobile phones to access the internet while on the go, this should become a significant consideration as you renovate your site.
Although both mobile friendliness and responsiveness ultimately improve a user’s experience, they point to two different things:
- Mobile-Friendly: You’ve optimized your site to be viewed in its correct form on any mobile device.
- Mobile Responsiveness: Your website is sensitive to changes in screen size browser being used, and its display isn’t affected negatively as any of these things shift.
- The Site’s Navigation Should Be Simple
When a user visits your site, they need to be able to navigate around your site with ease. So make sure that your site’s navigation isn’t muddled up and cloudy.
How easy is it to get around your site? There are things you can focus on as you try to fix this problem:
- Your main menu needs to have a maximum of 7 times (excluding the drop-down portions;
- From any given point on your site, a user needs to b able to get anywhere else they want within three clicks;
- Your links and labels should give as much context and description about where they lead as possible; and
- Your navigation bar should be fixed.
Ease of access is one of the critical factors that will influence whether a user uses your site or not.
- Use Negative Space Strategically
White space can be a strategic part of your website’s layout. This refers to the empty parts of your website.
You want to use this space to break down your content into smaller blocks and make it more readable.
If your website takes this simple element for granted, you’ll see your graphics and text overflowing into each other, making it hard for a reader to interact with your content.
You’ll need to take breaks from color and text and introduce negative space at various points in your website design.
- Improve Page Speed
Page speed is another important aspect to consider. If your site ever lags with so much as two seconds while a user is attempting a transaction, chances are they might abandon their cart. To avoid this, there are things you’ll have to do to make sure every part of your site is loading quickly.
- Optimize your images;
- Reduce plugins;
- Clean up the framework and themes;
- Use a content delivery network (CDN);
- Optimize your homepage;
- Use an excellent hosting platform; and
- Minimize the use of redirects.
- Create A Visible And Strong Call to Action
You want visitors to perform a specific action on your website, and that call to action should be as clear as possible. You could have good content on your site, but if you’re not leading a visitor clearly where you’d want them to go, they might be overwhelmed by options and not take any.
What’s your highest priority in terms of what you need a person visiting your site to do? Clarify this and use it to build a strong call to action, then make sure it’s one of the first things a user sees when interacting with your site.
Do you want them to create an account with you? Or buy your new book? Anything just formulates a strong and clear call to action to go with it. This is the part where every element of your web design is supposed to lead, that is, to you attaining your desired goal.
Conclusion
Designing a website is a strategic feat meant to achieve predetermined goals. Your website’s design needs to align with your company’s brand and goals. This content feature has outlined only some of the key elements you’ll need to achieve when improving your website design and its effectiveness aimed at debunking common misconceptions present out there.
Mustafa Al Mahmud is the Founder of Gizmo Concept and also a professional Blogger, SEO Professional as well as Entrepreneur. He loves to travel and enjoy his free moment with family members and friends.