What makes a good website? Well, the most stylish web design is worth nothing if the site doesn’t operate as expected. Equally, any site that contains every scrap of useful data and information your company needs to get out to its target audience won’t hold a single user’s attention if the design is clunky, looks awful, and is difficult to negotiate through. It’s all about balance. Nevertheless, most of all, it’s about knowing your audience.
Purpose
The absolute question you must ask yourself in the beginning, and then throughout the design, operation, review, and maintenance of your website, is its purpose. What is it set up to achieve? That goes for the whole site, but for each individual page too. There can be no slackers where website design is involved: everything on every page must serve a purpose, or it is wasted. Worse than that, it can distract from your main goal, whether that’s to inform, to sell or to entertain. It’s all about effective communication: if you waffle when you’re doing a sales pitch face-to-face, you’ll lose your audience. What you should aim for here is concise, targeted writing in a font that’s easy to read, with no distracting changes of typeface or garish colors that jar.
Design and Graphics
Make your website easy on the eye, and use those standout graphics and colors sparingly on things that really count, like your call to action button. Speaking of graphics, they say a picture paints a thousand words. It certainly does if you use the right one. Images must be as focused as your text: they’re not there to make the site look pretty; they’re there to add to your story. One well-placed, well-conceived infographic can replace pages of dreary text and focus the end viewer on exactly the information that you want them to see. So keep your business web page design simple, focused, and targeted to your audience, and you’ll hold viewers’ attentions long enough to get your message across.
Speed
In the world of the Internet, more does not equate to better. Yes, you may have plenty to say. However, Internet users’ attention span can be woefully low. If people can’t find what they’re looking for easily, then they’ll simply look elsewhere. There’s something called the ‘three-click rule’: nothing that you want your target audience to see or engage with should be any more than three simple clicks away from your homepage, or you’ve lost them. This brings us onto speed. One of the Top website design mistakes is a slow loading time. If your audience has a limited attention span, then you need to make the experience fast for them. Web designers will have a host of tricks up their sleeve to optimize the speed of your website and be adept at running tests to make sure pages load quickly.
Mobile Friendly
Finally, whatever you’re offering your audience must appeal to the most people possible, most of the time. This is why mobile-friendly is such an important consideration. One of the beautiful things about the Internet is that it’s open 24/7, and you want your website to be the same. If your target audience can’t access your site you while commuting to work or watching Game of Thrones on their sofas, you could have lost vital sales. If you have an existing site, then this can be rebuilt to be responsive. Alternatively, a dedicated but linked site for mobile users can be constructed. Your web designer will advise on which is more cost-effective for your situation.