Nowadays, websites have become a great source of income since most individuals rely on online services to get their needs such as products and services. Not only that, but if you want to have a chance of succeeding in today’s online driven world, then a professional website is a requirement.
Unfortunately, many new business owners are intimidated by the concept of having a website made for their businesses and have no idea where to start. If you own a website and you need help with web design, Agile Development can help you with your dilemma. We offer a wide range of web services including SEO, web design, and web development. To help you with your professional website, we’ll be talking about some website do’s and don’ts so that you know the best way to approach your website design and development. Keep reading below to learn more about it.
Here is the list of do’s and don’ts for you to keep in mind when designing your website.
Do’s
1. Do maintain consistency. A website with a good interface design is a must and this should be consistent throughout the website. The overall appearance, feel, and branding of your website must remain unchanging across the website’s different pages.
Consistent color, style of writing, navigation style, and typefaces should be evident on your website. When a website is not designed properly then it will be difficult to make the other aspects of the website consistent, which results in poor design. Not only that, but an inconsistent website design is going to make your users less likely to trust you for your products and services.
2. Do think about your target audience. One of the first things that you need to do before designing your website is to think about how your audience thinks, what their expectations are, and what their search habits are. This will help you form a strong foundation for the design and development of your professional website.
A website must be optimized for search so that it will be able to rank high on Google and other search engines. When updating your website and adding new pages, you must make sure to follow the most up-to-date SEO guidelines. Your website must include page titles, meta descriptions, and other relevant content for your website to rank high and compete with other websites on the internet.
3. Do provide a smooth navigation experience. A website’s usability depends on a lot of factors and navigation is one of them. When users try to access your website, they must be able to navigate through it with no difficulties whatsoever. Your clients should be able to access and navigate your website properly to help them find what they are searching for on your website. For example, if they’re looking for the list of products and services offered by your business, it should be easy for them to find and access this information.
Important Tips About Navigation:
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Clear labels must be used for navigation options. For menu options, make use of common language to make it easy for your visitors to understand.
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Lessen the amount of time that it takes for website visitors to get to their destination or link on your website. Use the least number of clicks for the visitors to get to where they want to go.
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Navigation options must be present in the footer of your website. A footer must be placed where your visitors can find it easily and it should also contain your contact information.
4. Do implement an intuitive layout on your website. A website must have a well-organized layout so that website visitors will know where to go with as few clicks as possible. Cluttered websites can be confusing for website visitors, which will make it difficult for them to navigate around your website. To make it easier for them, you can use a focal point on your homepage so that your visitors will know what to do when they arrive on your website for the first time.
5. Do make your website design easy to scan. Your website must be designed to make it easy for your visitors to scan the page so that they can find what they are looking for. When users want to browse for specific content or perform a certain task they will search your website’s pages until they will find what they are searching for. As a website owner, you should be having your website designed with a visual hierarchy in mind.
To do this properly:
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Avoid walls of text. Important information must be placed at the top of the page for website visitors to read and skim through it easily. Walls of text can be avoided by using headers or bullet points.
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Highlight important elements of the website. Emphasize call-to-action buttons, login forms, and links to make it easy for website visitors to see them. Use important elements as focal points on your site and make use of different texts with varying sizes and colors to make them stand out so that your visitors can easily spot them.
6. Do pay attention to your color palette. When you begin planning out your website design, you have to make sure not to make use of too many colors. Too many colors can affect your visitor’s views about your company or your brand, as well as overwhelm them, visually. For best results, a maximum of three colors should be used on your website design and these must be balanced with your branding.
Make sure to choose effective color combinations that will work well with your business’s branding. Again, your professional website is supposed to act as your business’s online presence, so your branding must remain consistent with your physical store. The colors that you choose need to reflect your company’s brand, should go well with your content, and be visually appealing to your visitors.
Avoid using random colors simply because you like them personally. You should always think about your visual brand and how this will reflect on your site visitors. If you have a specific color that you want to use, you can make use of an online color scheme generator to help you fill out the other colors that you can use.
Color psychology is also something that you’re going to want to look into if you’re having difficulty choosing the right combination of colors for your website. Different colors convey different emotions in audiences, especially in relation to each other, so make sure that you consider these when you’re planning your website design’s color palette.
7. Do invest in good content. The content on your website is a very important factor that you need to invest in. It should complement your website’s visual design. A good website is made up of both great design and content. The two must be equally balanced to capture your visitors’ attention.
When uploading content on your website, you have to make sure that the content works with your site’s design. Avoid using irrelevant texts that will affect your visitor’s experience. Provide content that is simple and straightforward to make sure that it can be easily understood by your viewers. Your content needs to be clear and easy to understand for your target audience. Do not make your content too technical as this will only serve to confuse your readers instead of educating them, and make sure that you follow basic formatting rules for your content.
Don’ts
1. Don’t make your website load speed too long. Online users are now more impatient and hate waiting for too long. Because of this, you should make sure to avoid making their wait times too long. If a website or page takes longer than five seconds to load, they may become antsy and irritated, increasing the possibility of them choosing to leave your website. Website load speed should always be a priority when you’re building your website.
To help make load times easier on your users, you can make use of a loading animation that displays how long they will be expected to wait before the content loads. In addition to that, your website must be optimized by reducing file sizes of all large elements, including images and videos.
2. Don’t set internal links to open in a separate tab. Internal links should be designed to open in the same tab so that you can design or make use of a back button for them to return to the original page. If you have a page or a file that opens in an external link, you should provide a warning so that your user will know what to do for their next step.
3. Don’t abuse automatic pop-ups. Pop-ups can be a source of annoyance to your website visitors, so the design of these must be taken seriously. You don’t want these to keep popping up in your users’ faces while they are in the middle of reading something or if they’re busy with something else on your site. Give them time to enjoy your website’s content and you learn to strategically place your pop-up at the end of the page so it will not be annoying to them.
4. Don’t use generic photos. When designing your website, don’t use generic photos as this can affect the user’s experience. Decorative photos may look nice and add value to the website’s overall design, but, more often than not, can harm the viewer’s experience.
5. Don’t use background music or videos on your site design. Avoid autoplay videos or background music that plays in a loop. Visitors will find this annoying, especially if they open your website on their phones, which can take up a lot of mobile data.
Not only that, but the last thing you expect from a website is a blast of music when you open it up for the first time. Video and audio options on your site design should be automatically put on mute, giving users the option to play it or leave it as is.
Background videos can also be kept in a mute loop in the background, however, keep in mind that this can affect your site’s load speed, so this is something that you need to think about if you want to implement something like this on your website.
6. Don’t implement horizontal scroll. Horizontal scroll is something that has been observed to affect user experience and bring about a negative response in website visitors. Most of the time, online audiences are used to scrolling down websites and do not intuitively look from left to right. Avoid using horizontal scroll as most of the time, content that is implemented in this type of website design tends to be ignored.
If you need help with your website’s design, Agile Development can help you! Check out our portfolio to see our work with different clients. You can request monthly or other work requests here. You can request a free quote and site analysis here.
Are you in the process of looking for a website design team to help you build your professional website? You’ve come to the right place. At Agile Development, we offer different types of web services such as SEO, web design, and web development. All of these services are at your disposal to help you increase your business’s online presence.
We have more than 12 years’ experience in the industry and have an excellent track record of helping our clients with different types of projects for their websites. If you need help with your website design you can contact us and tell us of any of your concerns. If you have any questions regarding our company or the services that we offer, you can call us at (385) 685-0642 or send us an email at admin@agiledev.org. What are you waiting for? Contact us and we can help you build your website today!
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