Society as we know it is highly dependent on the online environment; in fact, a great deal of jobs, money transactions, and communication is conducted via World Wide Web. Creating a website has become an equivalent of building a house, or opening a store to be more precise, in a particular area. Therefore, having a poorly designed website is absolutely ineffective. On the other hand, a high quality design is bound to attract more visitors and accumulate greater online authority as long as your website is maintained on a regular basis, updated with regular content etc. Although, it is not an overnight job, creating a website is not that hard. You can look up numerous tutorials online, take a portion of your time to truly understand them, and within a week, create a relatively solid website that will be better than 50% of existing websites. Here are a couple of things to bear in mind when designing your website.
Web Hosting Services
Finding a good web hosting service plays an important role in terms of website success. Your website needs to be available, crashing events need to be kept at the minimum, and you need to find someone who doesn’t want to skin you alive, financially speaking. Finding good hosting services will require you to read through a couple of reviews and customer feedbacks. Try to discover good quality and honest reviews, not those that are obvious advertising reviews. Your website’s stability, response time and general performance will depend on your web hosting choice. Do not risk your credibility by finding the cheapest solution possible. Invest some time, and find an optimal solution for this issue.
Decide On Your Platform
The quality and hardship of your web design are determined by the platform you choose. For example, WordPress is rather easy to master, and a lot of websites use it for this purpose. It is its simplicity that is partially responsible for the highest download rate in the world. WordPress is also reliable, functional, and simply the best platform for the beginners. Magento, on the other hand, offers a lot more options, it is free, but it is not as easy to master as WordPress, which makes the whole maintenance job a bit harder. Joomla and Drupal are also viable options, but bear in mind that these two are not your DIY projects. You will have a stable, good quality website, but you will very likely have to pay someone to create it and maintain it for you. Essentially, your platform choice will be influenced by the type of website you want to create. If you want to make a website for shopping then you are more likely to opt for Magento than for WordPress, for example.
Necessities On Your Website
As you go through other websites, you can notice a certain pattern. There is an “About Us” section, home page or landing page, description of your services, which should be more accurate than the one in the “About Us” section etc. Additionally, you should take some time to think about colors and themes. Better yet, do a research on what people find the most attractive when it comes to shapes, animals, font of letters etc. Determine whether you want your website to be strictly professional or more attractive for the younger audience before you decide on its aesthetic value. Install plug-ins, like social media sharing buttons, or plug-ins that can boost the speed of your website and make it seem more professional. Adding a blog to your website can be a great investment for the purpose of inbound marketing. Posting relevant content about your services that can be shared on other blogs, as a part of relevant linking will boost the authority of your site.
Optimize Your Website
You need to make sure that product descriptions and meta-tags on your website’s content are composed in accordance to highly ranked Google searches. The whole point of website optimization is to make your website more accessible to the public after a certain search is conducted. Also, by uploading the contents of your website on more than one server, your website will be localized in more than one area, once again increasing its chances of being discovered.
You are certainly aware of the importance of the online presence in today’s digital world, so you must know how crucial it is having a website that will promote your business in the best possible way. If you want your business to succeed, you need to simply follow these basic rules in order for you to make it visible and quickly take your place on the Web. Your website will put you out there and it will definitely result in you achieving your ultimate goal in making your business thrive.
Top 6 Web-Design Tips
If you are running a business, it is crucial to have a website for your organization, no matter how big or small it might be. Let’s face it, if a company doesn’t have a website, then it is probably a bad one. However, just having some kind of a website is not enough. You can’t just put it out there and expect it to do wonders for you. A website is the face of your company online so it is very important that it looks nice and friendly. The amount of potential customers you can get from the internet is quite huge and this is where your website plays a key part. A well looking one can encourage people to get involved with your business, while a bad looking one can repel people to look for services somewhere else. Luckily, there are people who have a lot of experience in this field and are willing to share their expertise and tips on how a well-designed site should look like.
The colors that people see on your website can have a massive effect on them. It is scientifically proven that colors affect our mood and, with this in mind, you will want to use those that put people in a good one. The color palette used should be neutral, as it will create an elegant, neat and modern look on your site. It is important that all colors “go with each other” in order to make the whole design seem as a whole. Apply different variations of coloring for headlines and important sentences you want to underline. Make the colors compatible with your logo and the items which are offered on the page. It is suggested not to use more than three different colors on one page so that it doesn’t look tacky. Paint your website so that the photos you have on it don’t stand out from the rest of the content and marketing materials.
Use functional fonts which are easy to read and neat looking
When you are deciding which fonts to use, bear in mind that there are many people who won’t be browsing your page from a PC, but also via mobile phones. Using fonts which are largely scaled can be good if people are looking at your web site using a computer. However if someone is using a mobile device, than those “good looking” large scaled fonts suddenly won’t have the desired transparency and look. These things happened because a certain font is not well scaled or rendered on a mobile device. This is why people at AltusHost suggest using a universal font with a size no less than 12pt. Many people overdo it by using too much different fonts which ultimately don’t look compatible. There is another reason why you shouldn’t use more than two different types of fonts. The load time of your page will drastically decrease if you use too many font families and this can cause your site to be unresponsive, especially for people browsing it via mobile device. Try using no more than two different types of fonts.
Invest in unique and good photos
When you visit a certain page, one of the first things you notice is whether the photographs are generic. This is what most internet users notice first, and that’s why you can’t afford that happening at your site also. When someone sees generic photos, he or she will automatically presume that the company is generic also. You think your company isn’t generic? Then show that to your potential clients and customers by hiring a professionally trained photographer, who will spice things up. If not, then buy some professional stock photos that fit the profile of your work. Unique photos and images draw the eye, while making the observer develop an emotional connection with the content under the picture. Poor quality photos will not send any kind of message to people which is in a way worse than not having any photographs.
Include a call to action button
If you look at any successful online retailer’s or service provider’s site, you will notice one thing that is always the same. Each and every one of them contains a “call to action” button (CTA). A call to action button is used to guide customers towards the ultimate goal – buying something. It usually takes a small part of the landing page and contains a message addressed to potential customers. The best call to action buttons should clarify what you offer and should be simple. The best examples look something like this: “Buy now”, “Order here”, “Work with us” etc.
Make your site user friendly
When you are consulting with your web designer, make sure that you are the one who has control over him. Designers are artists and artists tend to get carried away while neglecting fundamental things. It is very important that the website is clear and simple. Some of the people visiting your landing page may not be so skilled in using the internet and this is why your site must be intuitive to such an extent that even a child can use it. If someone is spending 3 minutes trying to find the “buy” button, he or she will likely press the “back” button.
Make the site responsive and functional
Before launching your website, make sure that it can load and run properly. Choose a good web hosting service and make sure it is responsive. Your web hosting needs can vary and they are directly related to how much traffic, text, photos and pages you have. If it takes 3 or more seconds to switch pages on your site, then people will get a negative impression about your company.
As we said before, the design of your website is very important, so choose a good designer and work together closely to achieve maximum results. With a good website, people will chose you even though your products or service may not be the best on the market.
