5 Tips to Improve your Website Design

Awareness, Reputation and Image are all key parts of any website design. They all have a major part to play in the success of any website. Here are five tips to ensure your design really hits the mark.

Understand your Target Audience

Understanding the audience is a topic often skimmed over but it’s actually really important. If you don’t know who you’re designing for then you could be missing out. It’s important to remove your own preferences and those of your client from your design process.

You’re designing for the customers, not the client themselves. Find out as much as you can about their business, the people they deal with and the audience they want to target. This will have a big part to play in your design process and will ultimately yield better results.

Remember: You’re designing to reach a goal, an objective. You need to be clear on that before you can reach it. 

Break the Mould

If your website looks and feels like everyone else’s, does it really represent the business and its goals? The answer is probably not.

Following standard design treads can make your design too safe, too flat. It’s important to experiment and try something different to make the design stand out from the crowd.

An example where breaking the mould can really improve your design is imagery. Avoid stock photos, they may look okay but it’s very likely that they’re being used elsewhere. Try taking your own photographs or getting a professional photographer on board with the project.

Visuals with Thought

The visuals of your design speak a thousand words so making it eye-catching can be the difference between a user staying or leaving the website. It’s important to consider the type of content that is going to be used when creating the design.

There are a number of options to consider including:

– Images

– Video

– Audio

– Animations

– Interactive content (such as a quiz)

– Forms

Using these types of visual can retain visitors on your site and when used effectively can steer them to your goals. After all, that what you want.

Thoughtful Content

The content on the page can say a lot about the business you’re designing for. Use this content as part of the design to sell the message to the user.

Make sure that key selling points are clear and what they should do next is obvious. Providing strong call-to-actions is a great way to encourage the potential customers to this objective. The inclusion of animation or movement is a great way to draw the attention of visitors, so consider how you could incorporate this into the design.

It’s also important to spare a thought for the things you don’t want. Such things like pop-ups. Sure they are great at getting in your face but it’s rarely a positive experience for the user. In fact, you could lose a potential customer altogether if you go with the popup method. 

Experience is Key

We’ve all been there, looking at website without a clue to what’s going on, not knowing where to find what you’re looking for. What do you do? Leave.

The experience of a website stems all the way from the planning stages to the finished result. By now you should know who you’re designing for and what your objective is. Time to make sure the experience to that objective is clear, simple and fast.

Think about speed. How quickly can you guide users to meet your goals? Does your design highlight the journey you want them to take. User Journeys are great when planning out the steps involved to meet any objective.

If your objective is to get users to sign-up for an account. Are your call-to-actions clear, are the benefits in front of them and does the form only have the essential fields? No one wants fill out a lengthy form.

Seeking feedback on your design is critical, ask everyone but most importantly your target audience. It’s great that your client loves the design but will it work with the people you want to engage with it?

This feedback will shape your design, don’t be afraid to take your findings and design changes to your client. Show them why the design is like this and supported by evidence most clients will understand and accept this.

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