A website is the fastest way to showcase your brand’s uniqueness online. With over 1.8 billion websites on the internet, it’s now more accessible for people to find information, products, and services from anywhere in the world. So, you should understand website design first, whether you’re building a personal brand, small business, or an online image for your multinational company.
Many brands have gained world-class recognition due to their strong online presence – especially from their website.
But not just any website. A poorly designed website will quickly repel visitors and give a wrong impression of your brand. We don’t want any of that, so we’ve taken our time to explain everything you should know about website design.
Before you build your website or hire someone to do it for you, you should read this first.
What is Website design?
Web design is the art of creating a website and its pages. It is an organized process that combines specific knowledge and technical tools from related industries, ranging from web design and statistics to SEO optimization. Having relevant knowledge of your industry secrets (strengths + strategy) is pivotal to designing a website.
Today, creating a website is among the tenets of growing an online presence and creating social awareness. A professional web designer combines content, outstanding design, and SEO to give you a website that focuses on your brand’s unique process and outcome. An excellent site should present your brand’s core values, generate leads, and help you convert leads to customers. But, more importantly, it provides a good user experience and helps your page visitors easily access and navigate your site.
What are the functional elements of a website?
How do you know if your website is functional? Here are the essential elements every good website must possess.
Interactivity in Website Design
A good website must be easy to navigate because this will aid in how users engage and interact with your site. Ease of interactivity will determine how people use your website when they open any page. It is important to keep your audience and customers in mind while you create a good design.
Content Must Be Specific
Good brand content is a great way to encourage users to stay on your website. Your content must be straight to the point and captivating enough to pull visitors in your direction.
The right content also helps market your brand, encourage users to develop trust and establish yourself as an authority in your field. When people trust the content on your site, it’s easier to convert them into loyal customers.
Speed
Internet users love a fast-loading website. If your pages take more time to load (more than 3 seconds), it becomes stressful and tedious for page visitors to spend more time or return to your website. Website speed also affects your SEO rating.
Best advice? Do everything possible to have a fast website. Several factors affect website speed, including using mediocre web hosting services, large file media, and irrelevant pages. As a website owner, you can impress your user when your pages load quickly.
Mobile-friendly Website Design
The world has become digitized, and almost every activity is on the internet. People prefer to find everything on their smartphones rather than on their laptops or computers. So, develop a mobile-responsive website to accommodate a more significant stream of users. The longer visitors use your website, the greater chances they’ll do business with you.
Please take this seriously because 57% of internet users say they wouldn’t even recommend a business with a poorly designed mobile website. Don’t just consider Android or iPhones. Also, fact-check your website responsiveness on any device that connects to the internet, including tablets.
A Good Foundational SEO
Tactical SEO (search engine optimization) places your website above others. It helps your brand to be easily discoverable online. Use the right keywords in building content for web pages, add valuable backlinks, and your page stands a greater chance of doing well in Google search results. You already know that there are tons of websites with similar content to yours, but you can use SEO as an advantage to rank higher than others.
An SEO-friendly website allows search engines to crawl easily across the site, explore and read pages, and learn more about how it should rank your website. This aspect can become a bit more technical. And you can learn all about SEO before you get started.
Develop a Strategic Call-to-action (CTA)
Design your site using relevant CTA tags to engage your audience and help convert them into active customers. This is a simple way to get people to take the next step on your website. Call-to-action statements could be in the form of “buy now” to “add to cart button” to “social media share buttons,” “read more,” or “sign up” calls for subscription.
The ultimate goal of a call-to-action is to give the user a clear direction of what you want them to do after interacting with content on your site. It helps you meet your business objectives, generate leads, and boost profit margins. A professional web designer can help you discover the most effective placements necessary for your website.
Create Beautiful Imagery
People are moved by what they see (visuals matter). Create and use attractive images, colors, and themes to help users understand your brand concepts more clearly. When selecting media on your website, use high-quality images that express your product and services. Your audience isn’t going to feel secure browsing through your page if the images of your business are of low quality.
The good news is that an internet specialist can also optimize this imagery to ensure search engine crawlers find it when someone is searching for your products or services. Adobe proposes that 59% of people prefer browsing ‘beautiful and well-designed sites rather than basic ones.
Types of Website Design: Adaptive vs. Responsive Websites
These are the two types of website design you’ll mostly find. In responsive website design, the content is created to fit into any screen size. It moves dynamically depending on the screen size it is accustomed to. These kind of websites can fit all screen sizes, such as desktops, laptops, mobile, and tablets.
In adaptive design, the website content is fixed in layout sizes that match standard screen sizes. Adaptive design works well for smaller sites that are being refreshed. Adaptive design snaps into place since the website serves something different, which relies on the device or browser used to view it.
A good, responsive design improves readability and promotes e-commerce to improve sales. Adaptive website design ensures the best user experience according to the user’s device to the interface, which limits the number of engagements.
Conclusion
It would help if you understood website design well to boost your brand and reach people worldwide. A well-designed website creates awareness of your brand among people and helps amplify your voice. Develop SEO best practices to put you on the top list in your field area.
You can develop a clear CTA within your pages to inform your audience how to engage with your site. Strategize now and reach out to a professional web designer to handle your website to stand out from your competitors. The time to build is now, so get started.