5 Easy Steps To Improve Your Web Design

First impressions are everything. Your web design can make or break people’s first impression of your brand. You’ve spent countless hours brainstorming ways to drive traffic to your site, but it only takes 50 milliseconds for people to form on opinion on it.

Interacting with your website should be an intriguing, positive experience. With these key elements, you can drive traffic and keep people on your site for longer:

Incorporate multimedia

Your company’s website should tell a story about your team and your mission. Get creative with your web design – multimedia is in. Even with riveting words and headings, all-text is most likely to scare away visitors. Users can’t engage with text. Pictures are always effective additional content, but picking the right ones is a skill that takes prior knowledge. If you can, find a photographer who can take quality pictures of your company’s work and space vs. using stock photography. Authenticity is key for building trust.

All Into the Blue-created websites include powerful imagery from the get-go that lines up with the brand’s mission. Like these for example:

Beyond photography and text, go above and beyond, look into creating videos and other interactive content. Upload a demo reel of your company’s best projects over the past year and showcase your talents. Short and sweet infographics can also give visitors a clear idea what your brand is all about. Adding interactive content like polls, surveys, and calculators give the visitor incentive to keep exploring your site.

Make your site easy to navigate

The more you try to complicate or clutter your web design, the less user-friendly it becomes. Users should always know where they are and never have to scramble to find their next stop. Plan out your navigation menu on a document or spreadsheet to ensure everything is where it needs to be. Some tips to improve your user interface are:

• Stick to web conventions.

• Be consistent with your pages and your hierarchy.

• Make the most important elements stand out.

• Replace “404 Error” with more user-friendly language.

• Create a visual sitemap.

• Make sure your links function properly.

• Give clickable photos alt attributes.

Even more important than desktop design is mobile design. In 2018 so far, over half of users visited sites on a mobile device, and the number is only increasing. Because of this, an easy mobile design is crucial. Navigation using hamburger menus, colors, and indentations on mobile can all help the user. See how mobile-friendly these Into the Blue-created sites are: 

Use your web design as a SEO tool

The best web design in the world won’t matter unless your page is ranking in search engines. One of the most necessary steps in using your web design as a SEO tool is creating a XML sitemap. Sitemaps are basically a coded version of your menu that you submit to Google. Without one, Google doesn’t really know you exist, and that means no traffic. Codes aren’t the only way to boost your SEO – it also depends on the quality of your content. Having a video on your homepage increases your chance at appearing in a front-page Google search by 53 times.

Other content to consider adding to your site:

• Blog posts

• Social media plugins

• Industry-related articles

• Webinars

Create a call-to-action (CTA)

The ultimate mission of your website is to drive sales and promote your business. Using your navigation strategies, the user should always know where to go next. To do this, you need to understand how web design operates as a conversion funnel. There are 3 types of CTA web content:

• Top-of-the-funnel: General, educational content. This includes industry trends and information that don’t explicitly mention your business.

• Middle-of-the-funnel: Why your brand. This is where you explain the benefits of your brand specifically, and what unique services you bring to the table.

• Bottom-of-the-funnel: Connecting people to your brand directly. These CTA’s usually offer one of your services instead of just educating people about your brand. These include demos, consultations, trials and more.

Your web design and navigation set-up should reflect this funnel. By introducing less explicit content first, people can build trust in your brand. After making a good first impression with your superb content and easy-to-use interface, the potential customer will more likely to engage with the bottom-of-the-funnel CTA.

Hire a web design specialist

This is just a sliver of what goes into the art of web design. It’s an intricate, complex process that not many have mastered. With a professional in your corner, they’ll do all the in’s and out’s for you. They’ll boost your sales, drive your traffic, and increase web engagement all by changing some pixels around. In reality, it’s hard and almost impossible to learn everything yourself – no matter how many guides you read. It takes experience to learn how to create faster websites, how to code using PHP, and how to match your industry to your website. It’s much easier having an actual person to consult than a Wix or WordPress representative through an automated chat.

At Into the Blue, we have web and graphic design experts on our team who have been in the industry for over 20 years. This is why we are considered one of South Florida’s Top Web Design Companies. Our unmatched experience will help your brand and website reach its full potential while getting seen by your target audience. Get in touch with us today and enhance your web design by emailing us at team@intotheblueagency.