These days, professional WordPress website developers are in high demand for good reason. Sure, there are plenty of website builders out there, and WordPress is as easy to use as it ever was. It seems like practically everyone can quickly create a website with ease.
However, when you’re running a business, things are a little bit different.
Professionals know that web design is no simple thing – there are tons of guidelines you need to learn and follow if you want a website with a stellar UI and UX. In fact, a lackluster website will hurt your business more than it helps; people judge the trustworthiness of a business by how much it invests in its online presence.
Bear this in mind – no matter what kind of industry you’re in, your website is your main storefront. And it’s there 24/7, so you need to make sure it leaves a good impression on potential customers.
Don’t worry, we’re here to help. While it would be impossible to fit all the best practices for web design in a single article, we’ll cover some of the basics you should know before you move onto more in-depth stuff – so let’s get into it!
Brand Consistency
If you’re the owner or manager of a business, you know how important your brand identity is to the success of your enterprise. It’s the foundation that supports the rest of your business, so you need to make sure you’re on firm footing.
How do you achieve that? It’s simple – through consistency.
These days, customers interact with companies across more touchpoints than ever before. They walk into physical stores, open up a mobile app, check the brand website from a laptop, open email newsletters from their tablets, and much more.
All of this means that your business needs to present a united front across all consumer touchpoints. And your website is a crucial one among them.
So, your color scheme, logo, and iconography should all be identical to the ones on all the other online platforms you maintain. And the same goes for your key messaging and brand voice. Every element or written word on your website must reinforce your tone, aesthetics, and value proposition.
Strong CTAs
The road a consumer walks from being a lead to becoming a paying customer is a long and winding one – no one knows that better than digital marketers. And while all the elements you craft along the buyer’s journey are important, few matter as much as your call to action.
The CTA is what ultimately pushes leads to convert. And it doesn’t matter whether you want them to subscribe to a newsletter, purchase a product, or book a call – you need your CTA to be as powerful as possible.
That’s why it needs to be imminently clear and strong. It needs to dispel any potential objections, be placed in an extremely visible spot on the website, and be highly enticing.
Excellent Navigation
Depending on what your company does, your website may contain tons of in-depth content or platforms that solve specific and complex user problems. And while complexity usually means a lot of value – it should be complexity in content, not navigation.
The last thing you want is for your website to become a daily treasure hunt for your users. All the navigation options and buttons have to be obvious, clear, and intuitive – allowing visitors to access them without even thinking about it.
Remember – the easier you make it for your users to traverse your website, the easier you’ll make it for them to convert. An engaging, deep experience is only possible if it’s devoid of frustration. And in this era of extremely short attention spans, a couple of moments of confusion are enough for users to close your website’s browser tab and move onto the next thing.
Clean Design
Now that we’ve mentioned short attention spans, we’ve got a neat segue to our next point – clean design. You need to be aware of one simple fact: people don’t spend as much time on individual websites as they did a decade or two ago.
Today, there’s just too much stuff to see. So, they’re almost guaranteed to skim your content and move on. But you shouldn’t be frustrated by that fact – instead, you just need to ensure your content is easily skimmable.
People need to digest it in the quickest possible timeframe. And you need to be cognizant of the fact that people don’t want to be overwhelmed. Keep things clean and simple regarding your copy, images, and colors.
You don’t want to seem aggressive or kitsch, so avoid an explosion of sights and sounds. Instead, just fill your website with meaningful, original content. Use white space properly, and make sure all of your design elements are presented with a clear visual hierarchy.