Nowadays, it’s practically unimaginable for businesses to not maintain an online presence in any shape or form. At the very least, a business should own a social media account. If you want your business to forge a strong and reliable presence, however, nothing outperforms an official website in boosting credibility and promoting your brand.
When it comes to catering to the online audience, you must pay due diligence to addressing their demands for immediacy and efficacy. People tend to be impatient when dealing with online technology; they expect to get the answers they want in a matter of seconds. Connectivity issues aside, your web design actually influences the responsiveness of your site, too.
Curate the Visuals
The heavier the load is on your website, the higher its propensity is and the longer it takes to load. When it comes to designing your website, visuals serve as an essential element, but it’s also one most easily overused.
Hi-res photos, video files, animations, and layers of color screens can all bog down a page. While there are applications that can help improve your interface to make it visually appealing, with roving images or picture enlargement schemes, you still should lay it out with prudence. Don’t go on an image uploading spree by simply peppering the page with photos.
Not only can image stuffing mess up your loading time, but it can also dilute the message that you wish to deliver. A cluttered site or page can cause user confusion. Therefore, learn how to filter your options for your gallery uploads.
Navigable Menu
If your site includes a lot of sub-pages and subcategories, a navigation menu is strongly recommended to help visitors move quickly around your website. Again, the point of all this is to make their online experience as pleasant and convenient as possible.
Presenting users with a clear idea of where to go for the information or action they are pursuing not only lends a good impression but also encourages users to explore your site and brand further. This gives them the opportunity to better know your brand or company, which in turn can foster brand loyalty later on. It also expands your reach to other sites your users visit, as they share their thoughts and results with your brand.
In this vein, pay close attention to your content. Target it toward your audience’s interests and lifestyles.
Responsiveness
Active, relevant hyperlinks, easily accessible information, and engaging calls to action in banner images are all part and parcel to good website design. Keep in mind, however, that they are useless when they are not as functional or responsive as your users desire.
Therefore, always check the accuracy of your links; they should all go directly to the relevant page. Otherwise, your users are not going to be able to access subordinating information that they need to assess your brand. Double-check links to make sure they do not go to dead pages; in this case, a home page or higher-tier page of the linked site loads. User frustration then ensues and you lose them to another competitor’s website.
Responsiveness particularly plays into the most crucial audience today: the smartphone and tablet user. A business, especially local ones, cannot afford to neglect mobile-device responsiveness. According to studies, Americans use their smartphones for browsing online at an average of 87 hours per month. In the rest of the world, this trend exceeds the U.S. standard.
This means your company’s website should be mobile-ready and not in the vein of maintaining two or three versions of your site. Rather, your website design should be able to intuitively reconfigure itself to accommodate specifications for all mobile displays.
Indeed, such universality in your website demands some technical know-how. However, if the task proves too tall for you or your staff, professional, experienced firms stand ready to help, such as Customer Finder Marketing.
Sources:
The 10 Essentials of Any Effective Web Site. Forbes.com.
Why You Absolutely Must Have a Mobilized Optimized Website. Business2Community.com.