This is the second part of our “Tips to Improve Your Website” series and today we are talking about the look and feel of your website and how important it is to get it right, to follow through and to remember why your visitor is on your website.
If you are interested in our other articles in this series you can find them on our news page in our web design category.
Tip Number 2: Work on the Aesthetic
Homepage/Website Design & Layout
Does your homepage look appealing to your specific target audience, does it make you want to read on and visit other pages in the site, or does it make you want to look for another business to fulfil your needs?
There are a variety of ways that we can improve the aesthetic of your homepage and website as a whole. To make a good first impression the home page needs to be well designed and have a simple structure.
Initially, upon first visit no one wants to be reading too much information, therefore if we only add the key business message and keep the content on the page short yet descriptive – we want visitors to click through the site to find out more. Using useful icons and images with simple “click through” functionality to get your visitor started on their journey through your site quickly and intuitively can help with this.
If visitors are interested in your company and its history, it’s in further, deeper linked pages where you can add details about what makes your business different, providing an easy link structure to your site will help for those visitors who want to know about more than the products and services that you offer.
It’s important to keep your pages and the overriding message consistent throughout. Going from one font and colour scheme to another later down the page or across the rest of the site will detract from your core messaging and may look like a bit of an unfinished mess so we advise to keep it simple and stick with your brand identity and key messaging throughout.
Adding in movement by using videos or animation on your site will help to draw focus but be careful not to over do it, no one want to feel seasick or spend time waiting for the button they wanted to click to come back around.
Use high-quality images, it is a good idea to showcase your best images to grab your visitor’s attention. Most importantly remember this is your time to make a great first impression, like when you go for a job interview you wouldn’t show up exactly how you woke up, would you?
Don’t over share, while it’s tempting to put all of your work in a top of the page slider on your home page very few people stay beyond a few seconds so are likely to miss them, the key is to get your visitors on the right journey for them and to the page that has the highest chance of converting for your business. So pepper your content along the route you want them to take to encourage them to follow it.
If you have lots of images that you think will be helpful create a gallery they can visit and link to it or if you feel there are case studies that they will find helpful create a case study section they can view at leisure without trying to squeeze all of the information on one page that can look over complicated and “stuffed” and so appear off-putting to your visitor.
Lastly remember that while vital to your site and brand message the home page of your website is not always going to be how your visitor first sees your site. For many visitors the first page they see may be a page that they found in organic search results, a campaign page that was emailed out to them or a paid advert landing page or a referral from another site so they may visit your home page only after they have seen other information on your site. It’s important therefore that you home page pulls in all the data that is spread across your site together, covers the main messages and clearly leads off to the areas that are important to your visitor as it is likely that if not the first page they see it will most certainly be the second!
Keep an eye out for more “Top Tips to improve your website” on our news page!
Web2market are happy to help you with improving your website and increasing the conversion traffic to your site, starting with the website design and user experience.
Our team can assist you in making a great first impression for your customers.
Please feel free to contact us at [email protected] or call us on 01480 878510.