Good websites stand out from the rest of the crowd with ease. Think about all the websites you visit in a single day and then try to compare them. The experience of using a well-planned website versus something that simply just doesn’t feel nice is immediately noticeable, even if you can’t put your finger on why.
Creating a good business website isn’t an art, it’s a science. There are proven ways to help you drag people to your website then hold onto them, and to make an attractive business website you just need to learn these simple golden rules of web design. If you want to make the most out of your website, then here are a couple of quick and simple tips that can help you improve it.
Hire good writers
The content on your website has to be professionally written. It’s ideal that you hire copywriters or other forms of freelance writers to create articles, product descriptions and other written material for your website. It needs to be free of spelling mistakes, grammatical errors and other things that would put customers off your business. If you want to make a great professional appearance, then you need to focus on providing a professional experience. No one is going to trust a business website that is loaded with spelling errors. Even if they are honest typos, it doesn’t give off a good impression despite how easy it is to fix these errors.
The content on your website also needs to be relevant. A good writer will easily be able to identify what your website is about and write articles, blog posts or product descriptions that fit neatly into your style. They also understand your goals as a business and, if they’re unsure, are more than willing to ask you about your business so they can get a better understanding of what it is you do. If a writer you hire suddenly starts asking questions about your business, then they aren’t doing it for no reason; they’re trying to put themselves in your shoes.
Become friends with Google
Google is one of your best friends in the online world. If you think about how people discover your website, then chances are they find it through a search engine such as Google. There’s a strategy known as search engine optimisation (SEO for short) that focuses on getting your website ranked highly on Google. Using things such as Website Rocket’s local SEO software, web owners can modify their websites to make it more attractive to Google.
How it works is Google ranks websites based on their popularity and relevance. Relevance is usually determined by how many keywords you are using on your website, if your content is original and how many other people are linking to your website. For example, if someone searches “apple trees” and you have a website dedicated to talking about apple trees, those keywords will be repeated on your website many times and you’ll be ranked higher on Google than a site that’s just about gardening. Original content essentially means that the content you have on your website can’t be found elsewhere, and Google praises content creators that seek to add more high-quality opinions and information to the internet. Lastly, if people talk about your website and post links on places such as social media, then Google will see your website as a trustworthy website that deserves a higher spot.
Adapt your website for mobile
Many internet users view websites exclusively on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. This is because it’s far more convenient to use a handheld device when they’re on the go than bringing out a laptop. Whether it’s on the train for the morning commute or just walking to work, people can use their smartphones to access the internet and browse their favourite websites. However, the small mobile screen means that you can’t directly translate a desktop website to mobile. The text would be too small, it would be hard to navigate even while zooming in and out and links would be difficult to click with a touchscreen.
This is when website optimisation comes into play. There are two major factors in making a successful mobile website for your business. First, it has to be optimised so it’s easy to navigate on a small screen. And secondly, it has to be low in data usage.
Although many web hosts automatically scale your website to fit onto a smaller screen, it’s a good idea to try and plan your mobile layout so that it’s not cluttered and mobile users can find all the information your desktop page has with ease. This means getting rid of long and uninteresting sentences in your product descriptions, and laying out the menus so that your mobile users don’t need to jump through a maze of links just to reach your contact details. To optimise the data usage, don’t use too many large images and do away with complicated navigational menus. Reduce video clip usage and don’t embed too many videos that start auto playing when a user visits your site.
Navigation is important
As mentioned briefly in the previous section, navigation is important. If there are important pages on your website, such as contact information and user account settings, then they need to be easy to reach. You don’t want people to click a dozen times before they reach their destination, it would be like asking someone to go through a hedge maze before they reached their front door. Sure you might learn the route eventually, but it gets tiresome and you just want a direct path to go home. Internet users are no different. You don’t want them to get used to clicking through a list of links before they reach their desired page.
Basic things such as contact information, user account login and your blog should easily be accessible from any page. A side menu is a good example, but having links at the top for all the different pages on your website can work just as well. You also want a search function on your website, especially if you have a blog or a website with a lot of articles.
