Are you interested in getting help with the design of your website? A well-designed website is a great investment. It’ll bring visitors to your site and it’ll help you engage them so that there’s a good likelihood of at least some of those visitors becoming customers.

Whether you drive traffic to your website with SEO, with pay per click campaigns, via social marketing, article marketing, or a combination of the above (your best bet!), the right design elements do make a difference.

Read on for some advice from someone who has seen many website design successes and some web design epic failures:

1. Forget Flash. Big, slow-loading and flash-driven home pages are nothing but self-indulgent. Your customers and prospects don’t have time to look for the ‘Skip’ button. Most of them won’t bother looking. They’ll just surf away from the page.
2. Good site navigation is vital. People need to scan the page and see what they want. Don’t make them dig. Think logically and make sure it’s easy-to-read.
3. Certain colours and fonts appeal to certain people. Get to know what your typical visitor likes. It might take some research and analysis but the right design does make someone stop and do a double take.
4. Look at your competition. Make sure you’ve got something they haven’t got. Make sure whatever they’ve got ….yours is better. It’s not a contest against them in the way that you want to outdo them just for the sake of looking better but you want to fill a need that people won’t get filled on the competition’s site. Don’t just try to look better. Strive to be better.
5. The area above the fold is prime real estate. Use it wisely.
6. Don’t overcrowd your site. Think clean.
7. Don’t be afraid to invest in a professional website designer. It’s worth the investment.
8. Don’t forget an opt-in box. You want visitors to be compelled to opt-in so that you can maximise the potential of appealing to them.
9. Remember that your website is always going to be a work-in-progress. The work is never done so don’t plan to leave it static. (Hint: WordPress blogs can make great business websites! They’re search engine friendly, easy to update, and there are very talented WordPress designers who can  customise your site and give you a blog section that lets you regularly update the site)

Need help with your website design? Fill in the form on the sidebar of this page and we’re happy to quote you!

(photo: Banjo Ari)