Your website reveals a lot more about your brand than you realize. More than just a place to store all you or your company’s information, it’s also an opportunity to showcase who you are, your product, your goals and values, as well as brand credibility. If you get each of these things just right, people will be more inclined to revisit your site and convert. A poorly designed site will probably inspire the opposite reaction in visitors. So, how do you create a site that lends your brand credibility? The following four tips should get you started.
But before designing your site, ensure it’s hosted on a reliable web host, such as Spaceship.
User experience
Your top priority when designing a website is ensuring the layout is intuitive and easy to navigate. If you make it difficult for visitors to behave how you want them to, they’re unlikely to do it. The easiest way to achieve this is by keeping your layout as simple as possible. Categorize your pages in a way that makes sense, and that can be easily navigated to from the home page. Don’t underestimate the importance of CTAs in getting users to go where you want them to! Getting consistent feedback is the best way of ensuring you're doing everything right.
Memorable visuals
Your website is the one place online where you have complete control over the look and feel of your brand, so don’t squander this opportunity. Take care when choosing a color palette, imagery, fonts, and copy style. More minimalist, muted tones reflect a more serious business, while brighter colors suggest something fun and youthful.
Fast load times
The continual improvement of the Internet has led people to expect lightning-fast load times for every website they visit. If any page on your site takes longer than a few seconds to load, you’re running the risk of losing potential conversions right off the bat. There are a few things you can do to help speed things along. First off, clear the clutter. Slow page speeds are often due to large files taking a while to load. Improve this by compressing image sizes and CSS, JavaScript, and HTML code. If you use plugins, delete anything you no longer use and assess whether the ones you need are necessary. You can also enable browser caching, which allows the user’s browser to store some webpage information so that it loads faster each time they visit.
Mobile-friendly design
It’s easy to neglect mobile when creating a website, which is a mistake. Most people spend the majority of their time browsing the internet on mobile devices. So if you don’t make a website with a mobile-friendly design, you’re already discounting a whole heap of potential users. A great way of doing this is opting for a responsive design, which will make your site adapt to the screen size of the visitor’s device.