With the onslaught of online businesses and online stores, a website became necessary, not an advantage. What will give you the edge to stand out is having the best website design. With all the websites created in the past months, your website can easily get lost in the shuffle. Many website builders and tools can help practically anyone who has a laptop and an internet connection create a website of their own. So, if you want to stand out from all of these websites, you have to devote time, effort, and money to improve your web design. It is essential that you really take to heart the importance and genius of website design. And, of course, we've got your back. So in this article, let us jumpstart your efforts by giving you practical web design tips you can use when you make your own website.
Top Web Design Tips for Your Website
1. Let Your Homepage be Clean, Clear, and Precise
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
Your homepage is the first thing that your customers and site visitors see when they visit your website, so it only seems logical to start off our list of top web design tips with it. When improving your web design, keep in mind that your homepage is your welcoming brigade. Your site visitors and customers will first set their eyes on, so you have to ensure that you leave them with a good first impression. You can do this by making sure that your homepage is clean and clear. That is, make sure that it is without much clutter and noise. It must only include the most basic and precise information necessary to encourage your site visitors and customers to keep on scrolling. This is among the most effective web design tips because you are golden if you can get a good first impression.
2. Set Your Website to Be Easy to Navigate
No one likes to get lost - especially not when scrolling through and exploring a particular website. This second item in our web design tips for your website reminds you to pay attention to how your website is organized. You should look into how you arranged the navigation buttons for your site visitors and customers. Take care not to overcrowd your navigation menu. Improving your web design will require you to organize your navigation in a way that will actually help anyone who visits your website to find the information that they want to find. If they cannot easily find what they are looking for, they would not be compelled to stay and explore some more.
3. Integrate Social Media on Your Website Design
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
Social media plays a significant role in any industry of today. It is not only where most of the people hang around most parts of the day. It is also where everyone can easily interact with each other. It wouldn’t be right not to mention this as one of your website’s most effective web design tips because social media integration is something that you wouldn’t want to miss out on. You would be wasting significant opportunities of reaching people and improving your website design if you don’t put your social media accounts on your website (or your website on your social media accounts). It might even prove helpful to include your social media feed on your website so that your customers and site visitors can easily see your feed and connect with you. Once your socials are connected with your customers, you can more quickly and conveniently update them about the most recent updates of your business.
4. Give Them All the Answers
A good website design is practical and helpful to its site visitors and customers. Next up in our effective web design tips: be generous with information. Not only does this promote transparency and accountability, which encourages trust and loyalty, it also allows your site visitors and customers to be satisfied. Providing the right, complete, and necessary information on your website without your customers or site visitors having to ask is good customer service. This is why it is among the top web design tips. If your customers are satisfied with the care you provide them with, then you are setting them up to be lifetime customers because you’ve already established with them that they can rely on you.
5. Use Pictures with People - but Not Stock Photos
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
Another essential item in our list of top web design tips is to use “people” pictures. That is, make it a habit to have a face (or faces) representing your business and your brand. Now, don’t get us wrong, we are not talking about getting celebrities or influencers as endorsers or ambassadors (although, if you have the budget, this wouldn’t hurt either). All we’re saying is that if you can procure it, you might want to include pictures of actual people on your website. Doing so not just makes for a good way of improving your web design. It has also been proven to help site visitors and customers be more comfortable in relying on and believing what you are saying on your website. However, as much as possible, try not to use any stock photos because making your website content generic. You can use pictures of satisfied customers or pictures of your team.
6. Follow the Laws of Visual Hierarchy
This next item in our list of the most effective web design tips is a bit technical but is valuable and helpful if you apply it right. The laws of visual hierarchy are a principle in website design that helps you present and organize your website content concisely and clearly. You can find a helpful diagram online representing the whole concept. But basically, it guides you through the size, position, color, format, and positioning of certain elements in your website. You would arrange this according to whether they are of low visual prominence or high visual prominence. Following these laws is not a requirement, but they are instrumental and effective in improving your website design best. This organization emphasizes each of the elements according to how vital they are for your website.
7. Include a Call-to-Action Button
Image taken from Strikingly Product
Including a call to action button is one of the most common yet most important and practical web design tips. This button can be an encouragement to initiate contact, sign up as a subscriber, make a purchase, donate, etc. This is important in improving your web design because this allows you to give your customers and site visitors a gentle nudge towards doing the action you want them to. However, don’t just carelessly plaster them in various parts of your website. What makes this one of the top web design tips is the reminder to place your call-to-action buttons strategically.
8. Avoid Lengthy Paragraphs
Unless it is on your blog section or pages, avoid bombarding your site visitors and customers with hundreds (or thousands) of words all in one place or section on your website. Doing so will plainly be a bad website design. This next one of our most effective web design tips is an indication for you to let your website and your customers breathe. That is, do not present them with something that would require more than a quick skim through. If you have much information that you have to present, try to find a way to separate them and distribute them evenly throughout your website. This is one of the best things you can do when improving your website design because doing so will increase the probability of getting the message across. Remember that not many people will be encouraged to actually read these lengthy paragraphs.
9. Add Social Proof and Customer Feedbacks
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
Feedback from fellow customers and peers encourages your customers and site visitors to trust you more and easier. This is included in our list of top web design tips because improving your web design should also get the trust and confidence of your customers and site visitors. Social proof and customer feedback would help you do that because they are truthful, unscripted, and genuine. Other customers will see and feel this. They would more likely and more easily connect with you because they found comfort relating with their fellow customers. This will also help you increase your credibility because you have valid and valuable feedback and proof of your superior products and services.
10. Utilize Search Engine Optimization Techniques
Obviously, being found by people is a must; otherwise, what are we doing here, right? Thus, improving your website design will require you to utilize search engine optimization techniques for your website. You might have heard this many times before, but it still has to be included in this list of top web design tips because that’s just how vital it is. See, no matter how wonderful, amazing, or highly innovative your website design is, if the people you prepared them for do not find their way to it, it’s all going to be a waste. We wouldn’t want that, and so you have to arm yourself with the right SEO techniques and strategies so that your website appears at the top of the search engine results.
These top web design tips for your website won't work in an instant. But you can guarantee its effectiveness more if you make sure that you really align them with your overall website strategy, branding strategy, and marketing strategies. If you can set all this up to complement one another and work together well, then you are basically setting yourself up for success. In addition, while executing any of these web design tips, keep in mind the core and main essence of your business and website. Always remember to think with a customers-centric mindset and really think about what would best connect with your visitors and customers. With the right ideas and the right tools, you can accomplish so much with these top web design tips. Sign up with Strikingly now and start making and improving your web design!
