No matter what you use your small business website for, the design is always a top priority. Your website’s design provides visitors with their first look at your company, so you need to make as good of an impression as possible. Many business owners focus so much on the operational side of their business, however, that they forget about their websites.
In a time where online commerce is an increasingly dominant portion of consumer sales, it’s more important than ever to focus on the design of your website. Here are five key tips that can help you design a customer-focused website.
Follow Modern Trends
Web design constantly evolves, with modern design trends updating regularly. If you want to gain trust and recognition through your website’s design, it’s important to keep up-to-date with modern trends. One way to achieve this is to use a web designer that can provide a minimalist yet aesthetically pleasing design that will never look outdated.
Integrate Tools
There are thousands of developers that provide useful tools and functions you can add to your current website. These tools provide effective ways to improve your site’s functionality and ease your workload on the backend.
If you run an e-commerce site, for example, an effective online shopping cart that enables effortless transactions will be an invaluable addition to any site design.
Interactive comments and community forums can also supply added functionality to your current platform. These are just a few examples of the thousands of integrated tools you can add to any website.
Easy Site Navigation
Modern consumers are impatient, so it’s important to ensure your site is easy to navigate. In particular, the different sections of your website should be clearly accessible when a page first opens. Creating clear, concise drop-down menus can help your customers find what they’re looking for. Plus, your visitors should find it effortless to navigate to any page.
Optimise for Mobile Browsing
Many new business owners make the mistake of only focusing on traditional web browsing when they build their new websites. This ignores the vast majority of people using the internet as mobile browsing is now the most prominent form of web browsing. In other words, more people use phone and handheld devices than traditional computers.
Therefore, optimising your site to respond and display quickly to mobile users will help improve user experience.
Provide Clarity
While this may seem obvious, it is important to provide information about your business on your website. After all, the internet provides plenty of opportunities for scammers and imitators.
By providing information about you, your services, and your experience, you will build trust with visitors. An About Us page can help, as can full contact details (including telephone numbers), testimonials, qualifications, and certifications.
Finally, Never Underestimate Perception
The way your customers perceive your website will reflect on the way they perceive your business. If you want to make the best initial impression possible, it’s important to compare yourself against your competitors.
Online marketing is extremely competitive – if you don’t keep the design of your website up-to-par, you risk falling behind.
