In this day and age, having a strong and prominent online presence is extremely vital for a business, regardless of its scale and sector. It is because the majority of customers prefer to visit a business’s website before making a purchase decision, making it essentially the first point of contact between the business and the customer.
For most potential customers, the website design is the primary benchmark for assessing business credibility. The layout and the overall look of the website have hence a major impact on the customer’s decision for further engagement. Therefore your business’s website design must represent your brand effectively, conveys the right message, and facilitates the users. Here are five ways to improve your website design and enhance its effectiveness.
Improve Website Navigation
Website navigation is one of the most important elements. If the website has poor navigation or there is a lot of information on the first page, the customer may feel overwhelmed or lost without any idea where to go. Hence it is important to organize your website in a way that potential visitors can easily find what they are looking for. The site layout and design must be consistent across all the web pages, and the pages must be labeled to facilitate customers.
If you are unsure of how to go about improving the layout of the website or do not have the relevant in-house resources or skillset, consider hiring a custom web design company to make the site best suited to your business needs; also comprises all the relevant elements represented in a user-friendly way.
Improve the Visibility of Call-to-Action Buttons
The call-to-action links or buttons must be strategically placed in areas where the customer can easily locate them. These can usually be found at the bottom or in the top right corner of the menu. It is also better to have one call-to-action link on the landing page to avoid confusion. In any case, the action buttons on the site must stand out so the user can easily spot and use them, improving their overall user experience.
Remove Distracting Elements
Often websites have certain elements that do not offer value addition; rather, they detract from the primary message you may be trying to convey. These could be heavy, overpowering images, lengthy text, complex animations, etc. When customers enter your website, they decide to stay or leave in a few seconds only, and these distracting elements may put them off from exploring further.
Keeping that in mind, review site details like the layout, spacing, colors, font styles, imagery, icons, and logo usage to determine how you can improve them. Make sure to keep your elements consistent throughout the site, especially font and colors, to avoid visual confusion or distraction from the main message.
Reduce the Site’s Bounce Rate
The bounce rate of a website, or the rate at which the visitors enter and leave the website, is an important determinant of the site’s performance. If the visitor enters the site only to leave it immediately, it leads to a higher bounce rate and reflects poorly on website engagement and performance. If you feel your site lacks in this area, you must identify the causes and measures to reduce the bounce rate.
For instance, one major element that impacts the bounce rate is the site’s loading speed. If the site has a poor loading speed, the customer will instantly switch to an alternative. Given the intense competition in the online landscape, you will lose out on potential customers due to one seemingly minor element.
Similarly, if the site is not mobile-friendly, that also increases the bounce rate. The layout is another factor to be considered in this regard, as discussed above. Focus on making the website user-friendly by organizing its content, using a nice layout, increasing its fonts, and refining the color contrast so that the site is more pleasing to the eye and engaging as well.
Improve Site SEO
If you want your website to be ranked prominently in the SERPs, you must improve its search engine optimization. This will enable customers to find your website easily and, more importantly, before your competitors. Hence to improve your site’s ranking, you must focus on its SEO and publish relevant and meaningful content regularly while ensuring the incorporation of the relevant keywords and using metadata effectively.
Final Thoughts
The bottom line is if you want your website to be an effective marketing and business tool, you must make its design efficient and its layout and navigation user-friendly. Doing things from the end consumers’ perspective may help you identify the existing problem areas in your site and help you
