Good website design is important for your business’ success. Irrespective of the type and size of your business, your website design tells visitors whether they should interact and make a deal with you or not. More surprisingly, this decision is made in just a fraction of a second. The first impression of your website either turns users into customers or urges them to move onto some other website.
So, if you want to pull traffic to your website, it’s important to remember that the first impression counts. With the technological boom and ever-growing competition, present-day consumers are now used to a certain standard of digital quality that they can trust. To match with this standard and stay ahead in the competition, you want to invest in a website design that is not only attractive but also functional.
Apart from creating a positive first impression, an attractive, functional and user-friendly website may help you in the following:
● Build trust amongst your visitors
● Keep up with competitors
● Generate better revenue
● Improve search rankings
● Reduce website bounce rate
● Establish a consistent brand identity
● Improve brand credibility
Visitors will have several different assumptions about your brand, based solely on how your website looks and functions. Thus, it’s your responsibility to ensure that your business website sends out the right message to your visitors and builds interest in your brand. Here’s the website design requirements checklist that you must consider to create a great first impression of your website.
1: Good Speed is a Must
How fast your website loads is one of the factors that creates the first impression about your business. Now, the more elements a business adds to its website design, the greater the chances of the site speed slowing down. This, in turn, can create not a little frustration from the user’s point of view. Remember, though getting creative with design is important for building a distinctive image before your visitors, too many graphics or plugins may decrease your page’s loading speed.
In today’s fast-paced world, your site visitors will leave the website if it takes more than 2–3 seconds to load. If it takes too long to load, you may lose your traffic, resulting in fewer sales and lower customer satisfaction. Also, Google and other search engines consider website loading speed as a metric to measure a website’s credibility. They find websites with higher loading speeds to be more credible and rank them higher on search engine result pages.
2: Pay Attention to Navigation
Navigation is one of the first- and most-viewed areas of your website. It is one of the factors that contribute to user experience. Easy navigation allows your visitors to access information about your business quickly and self-sufficiently. As a website can be considered the online face of your company, a user-friendly site could indicate the same for your business. When the navigation of your site is good, it presents a clean and structured look.
Easy navigation is also very important for increasing users’ visit duration. An easy-to-access site encourages visitors to stay on your web pages longer, explore further and understand more about your products or services. Alternatively, a site that is tough to access has a greater bounce rate as it affects the first impression of a website. Apart from the mentioned benefits, well-designed navigation plays a crucial role in improving your search engine ranking. Also, good navigation helps your website visitors to find your services and products effortlessly and further increases your overall purchase rates.
3: Optimize for Mobile Users
Today, more than half of all internet users use mobile devices to find solutions to their pain points. This means that most of your website users will be crawling through your site using smartphones or tablets. To create a positive impression on these users and transform them into leads, consider making your website responsive.
Responsive web design can be described as a style that enables a site to adjust its design according to the user’s screen size. If your website fails to fit onto your visitors’ devices, they might feel frustrated and move onto your competitor’s site. If the site is not optimised for mobile users, it may rank you lower in search results.
4: Improve Security
Security is a big concern among internet users. In such a scenario, if your website doesn’t offer enough security, you may lose a user even before they visit your site. HTTPS data transmission protocol is more secure than HTTP. However, if you are still using the HTTP protocol, consider updating it. All the major browsers show a red “Not Secure” warning in the URL if the site is not secure. This means your site does not have the extra layer of encryption to protect visitors’ data from being misused.
According to a recent study, more than 60% of users would leave a website straightaway after finding a “Not Secure” warning. To avoid losing these potential customers and most importantly to secure their data, ensure your website has HTTPS protocol.
5: Create Engaging Content
High-quality content is crucial for establishing your website’s credibility. Thus, when it comes to building the first impression of your website, create engaging content. To make your website visitors stay on your website for longer, ensure your home page and landing page content are clear and well-written. The content you use must be able to build interest in your customers by providing solutions to their pain points. Here, you need to be careful about grammatical errors, typos and awkward phrasing as they may reduce your credibility before your audience.
Ensure that the content you are using has the hook to keep people on the page. Here, you can make use of your special deals, discounts or promotions for better engagement. Remember, the best kind of content is the one that urges users to explore deeper into your site. Also, you need to understand that it is not a sales pitch, but simple yet buzzy content attracts people.
6: Create Value Proposition
Give your customers a reason why they should do business with you. Your customers must be able to get answers to their questions in a matter of seconds looking at your site. Your value proposition is considered as the statement that makes your audience understand what you do, how you are different from your competitors and why your visitors should care about you.
Keep the value proposition of your brand at the top of the page so that it entices your visitors’ notice. Here, two to three sentences are enough to grab your users’ attention and convey your brand message. Content that is too long for a value proposition might make them feel bored and lose interest.
7: Catch Attention with Videos
To make a great first impression, publish an introductory video that informs your audience about your business. A video is a great tool to demonstrate your products or services before your potential customers. Ensure that the videos you publish play as soon as someone visits your website.
Remember, one of the main reasons why your visitors leave your website is the amount of information being placed before them as text. However, when you place a video before them, it quickly grabs their attention. An introductory video of one to two minutes helps you to summarize your business message in an interactive way.
Takeaway
Though the importance of a user-friendly website can often be missed amid other business essentials, it’s one of the most important things where you should invest. When consumers visit a website, they judge it based on appearance, functionality and information. To create a positive impression, you must count on every single element (navigation, responsiveness, loading speed, colour, fonts, content, etc.) of your website.
To grow a business successfully with your website, ensure that you understand your audience and design your website according to their needs. Consider applying modern web design trends for 2022 so that your visitors continue returning to your site to seek solutions to their problems. If you want to go about this in a hassle-free manner, connect with a professional web designing agency in Brisbane for reliable web development.