The ideal virtual storefront: Tips to make your website stand out
Your business’s website is one of it’s most important tools – a ‘round-the-clock advocate for your products or services, a machine for lead generations, basically a virtual storefront. In many cases, your website is the first impression made to prospective customers.
So it needs to be great.
88 percent of visitors are not likely to return to a website after one bad experience. It’s a surprising statistic, but it certainly says something about the importance of user experience in website design.
Here are some of the top web design and UX essentials that will grow your business fast.
1. Video landing page
Incorporating video into your website design is mandatory these days.FYI, 78 percent of internet users watch videos online every week.
But, don’t just embed any old YouTube video. Instead, take your website design to the next level by creating a video landing page.
You could link this video to direct call to action or auto play a video loop every time your webpage pops up. Either of these approaches can provide information or drive home the brand’s identity — but both will improve UX and users’ impression of your company as a whole.
2. Above-the-fold
Your consumers don’t have time. It is important that the name of your business and the purpose of your website immediately obvious to visitors. When consumers land on your website, they expect to quickly see who you are and what you offer. Make sure the name of your business and your products or services are prominently displayed on your home page.
3. Speed
Does the website load in three seconds or less on a desktop, tablet, AND mobile? It’s gotta be speedy. According to studies, 47 percent of consumers expect a web page to load in two seconds or less, and 40 percent of people abandon a website that takes more than three seconds to load. Site speed killers include clunky code, large images, and too many external calls to cloud services.
4. Cleanliness
Your website should be filled with content that isn’t copied and error-free. You’re striving for simple and accurate. Typos, spelling mistakes and bad grammar are major hits to your website’s credibility. Kudos if you’ve got a grammar nazi buddy or, better yet, a professional proofreader and/or copywriter. At the very least, be sure to read and re-read the copy if you’re the only person writing it and publishing it on your website.
5. Incorporate consistent branding.
Studies show that consistent branding can increase revenue by up to 24 percent. Plus, a cohesive identity across every platform and device — including your website — will help to create a brand that consumers enjoy engaging with, leading them to want to engage with you over and over again.
This cohesive visual identity is not that difficult to reproduce. Top website designs utilize a recognizable color palette, imagery that provides value and information to users, consistent typography and a subtle branding on each page of the website — often in the form of a watermark-like logo go a long way.
6. Animated calls to action
Calls to action are a necessary evil in website design. The fact remains that your consumers won’t know what to do unless you visually shout out to them. Many. Many. Times.
However, simply telling your consumers what to do just isn’t enough anymore, either. They’re seeing stimuli and instructions from all corners of the web, so you need a little something extra to help your goal stand out.
Adding a little animation to your important action gateway might be just the ticket. Whether it’s a micro interaction (such as “liking” an Fb post and seeing the many reaction animations) or a simple effect to catch users’ eyes, consumers are more likely to execute the action you’re pushing when the call to action grabs their attention and provides confirmation of completion.
7. Search
How well does your website rank? “Googling” has now become a verb. Siri and Alexa are our BFFs. Typing into a search bar has become a muscle memory (and for some of us, an every-five-minutes behavior). Great job if your search feature is at the top. Not quite there? Make the investment into getting it fixed. WordPress websites include a default search feature, but you might want to explore more robust search plugins if you’ve got WordPress site with lots of pages. And, when in doubt, hire a professional.
By investing in website design, you can cultivate a wide and dedicated consumer base that will use your product time and time again. While there are many more design elements that you can incorporate into your designs, ultimately each choice should:
- Make users feel comfortable.
- Represent your brand.
- Clearly draw attention to important calls to action.
- Give users the information they need to make an informed choice