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posted by Al Bell on November 13, 2020
As a small business owner or a new entrepreneur, one of the best things you can do is get yourself online.
An online presence is absolutely fundamental to the running of a business in this day and age, and in order to successfully market your brand you must be able to engage people and stand out from the crowd.
Today we want to talk specifically about creating a great website. A website is the hub of your online presence, the window to your shop if you will. When customers are researching their needs they will visit a website to find what they are looking for. If your website is good, they will stay and look around but if it is not they will leave.
The trick to creating a good website is creating a good overall user experience, and this is what we are going to be discussing today.
Compress your images
Designing the homepage of your website can be daunting, and if you are a perfectionist it might take you days or even weeks to format it the way you want. One of the important aspects of design for your landing page are images. Images bring life to your website by breaking up paragraphs of text and providing visual interest, and in order to generate interest you should invest in great images. The problem however in terms of user experience comes with image size. You want images to be big enough to be clear, but you don’t want your webpage to take a long time to load due to huge file sizes. Use the legacy save for web feature on photoshop to compress your images to the right size so that the user doesn’t have to wait an age to see your homepage.
Add keywords… EVERYWHERE
Keywords are like the bread and butter of your website; they hold together the content of your website and make sure that everyone is able to find your website. Make sure when optimising your website that you add keywords wherever you can. Keywords can come in many forms such as in the meta title and meta description of your website, in headers, the menu, in image tags, and in links. Bringing keywords to your site that are relevant to your company ensures that when people search for your product, they will find you on their search engine results.
Utilise SEO tools
Keywords are a big aspect of SEO and if you were unfamiliar with SEO techniques, a simple way to learn is by using Yoast. If you have a WordPress website you can download the Yoast plugin and use this to add keyword phrases, change the page slug, and ensure that the title and URL of a page or post is relevant and easy to find.
Make it colourful
Colour is a huge part of any design whether it be a piece of art; your interior design at home; or your website colour scheme. Choosing a colour scheme for your brand is a tough decision and one which will take you a long time. When you first build your brand, you need to consider what kinds of colours represent the type of business you run. For example; if you were to have a pension scheme brand, green and white would work well for this as it represents investment and nature. If you are unsure what colours would work for your website, take a look to see what others in your field are doing and take this as inspiration. Colour has a way of making people feel something, and when they visit your website you want to set the tone for what they will experience.
Plan your content
It is incredibly important for you to plan your website content down to the last widget when you start your web design process. Using a card sorting service and sketching down ideas is a great way to ensure that you add all of the features you want and that you know what looks best in what position. Planning content can be difficult sometimes however once you have a clear idea of what you’ll add to your website and what content you’ll update it with, you can create a schedule and ensure that your website never goes stale.
Fix broken links
Broken links are the bane of a web designer’s life, and you’ll find a lot of issues with these as you begin building your website. Make sure before you launch your website to the public that you check every link out of the website as well as all contact forms and email links. From social media links to external links to other blogs; you need to make sure everything works because if it doesn’t, the search engine algorithms will work against you and you won’t be able to rank as highly as you perhaps should.
Create a simple menu
When designing the best website in terms of user experience; you should ensure that the navigation is simple and to the point. No faffing about with subcategory after subcategory. Keep things easy to read and easy to follow and people will be more willing to go looking for what they want. It is important to strike a balance between too little information and too much.
Add a search bar
One of the best things you can do for your website in terms of user experience is add a search bar for visitors to use. Most of the time when people visit your site they will have something in mind that they are looking for, and a search bar in the top right can make life a lot easier for them and for you. If you don’t offer this function and people have to go digging for answers they are less likely to stay with you.
Add contact information
The key to a good website is information. Always be transparent when it comes to sharing contact information because this is how you build a sense of trust with your audience. Display contact information on the homepage in the footer as well as having a contact us page with further info. This will make a big difference to customers and will help them choose you over a competitor.
Use these easy tips to make your website better for the user and hopefully gain more sales this year.
Credits: Pixabay
