These days, with so much online business, your website really acts as your company’s storefront. Therefore, you want to make sure you’re always putting your best foot forward by having a well-designed site. Your website should be easy to navigate and pleasing to the consumer’s eye. A high-quality website design is vital to running a successful online business.
Set Your Business Apart with these Website Design Trends
If your website hasn’t had a facelift in the past few years, then it’s probably due for a little polishing. Technology is constantly evolving and, if you’re not paying attention, your website can quickly go from looking sharp to looking drab. We’re not saying that you need to reinvent your website every six months but updating the appearance from time to time couldn’t hurt.
Adaptable Website Design
One of the most important things about your website design is that it is easily viewable on a variety of devices. More and more consumers are shifting over to mobile devices like smart phones, tablets, and even small laptops. Having a website that easily adapts to each screen size is important. Mobile users want quick loading websites that they can navigate with ease.
Websites that take more than a few seconds to load are typically abandoned early on. When that happens, the traffic you’re driving to your site never actually sees what you want them to see. If you’re paying for that traffic through Google Ads or any other medium, then you’re basically throwing money out the window. Likewise, if your website loads quickly but consumers can’t navigate around your site easily, they’re going to leave.
You also want to make sure your website is configured for Accelerated Mobile Pages, or AMP. This technology increases how quickly pages load on mobile devices. AMP functionality is also important to search engine king Google, who announced that they will give SEO ranking priority to websites configured with AMP.
Typography is King
Everyone agrees that the typography featured on your website should be easy to read and easy on the eyes. But these days, it needs to be more than that. Effective typography achieves two primary objectives. It creates a trustworthy environment, and it helps consumers understand the message you’re conveying.
The text on your website is the best way to communicate with your visitors. Not just because of the words you use, but how they look as well. The typography you use can elicit emotion, set tone, and distribute important information. This is particularly true now that resolution has improved across the board.
Right now, it seems consumers respond best to large letters in contrasting serif and sans serif headings. However, you don’t want to incorporate too many font styles in the design of your website. Then it just messy and cluttered. Try to limit yourself to 3 or so fonts that you’ll use throughout your website. Go the extra length to make sure that any font you use is easily readable on any device.
Everyone Loves a Good Infographic
People love infographics. They have for a while and we imagine they will continue to love them. And really, why wouldn’t they? Infographics tend to attract more people then blog posts do because they’re easily sharable.
A well-designed infographic offers information in an easily to digest format. Users can quickly and easily share this information via social media, text messages, email, etc. Incorporating infographics into your website in a useful way can help generate views, leads, and clicks.
Voice Optimization
Voice optimization went from being a new player in the game to dominating. Companies such as Amazon, Microsoft, Siri, and Google are all utilizing voice search in new and exciting ways. Devices in homes as well as mobile assistants on cell phones offers a new level of search for consumers. This doesn’t seem like a trend that’s going away as these major companies regularly release new devices and software utilizing voice search technology.
Optimizing your web design for Voice Search can make it user friendly for consumers. You’ll see increased visitors to your site and a quick response to client questions. It can also help you generate leads. Not to mention the fact that being voice search optimized increases your search engine optimization ranking. An increased SEO ranking leads to more organic traffic.
Making Sure Your Website is Search Engine Optimized
Many things you can do to improve your website are things the consumers never even see. There are a variety of search engine optimization techniques to help show Google and other search engines the value of your website. Having an optimized site means that search engines know you are a trustworthy source of information. As a result, when someone searches for something related to your company, you’ll appear higher in the search results.
The SEO rules are constantly changing and are difficult to keep up with. Many companies choose to hire SEO companies to help them stay at the top of the search rankings. A very important aspect of website design is providing the customer with a positive experience. This is how you keep them coming back for more. SEO shows search engines and the searchers themselves that your website is just what they’re looking for. But, if done incorrectly, customers will have a negative experience.
Companies like Portside Marketing specialize in both web design and SEO technology. These two things work hand in hand to help you reach and keep the customers you need. We take our jobs seriously and want to share our knowledge and expertise with you. Our hard-working staff is here to guide you through designing your website and optimizing your page to be the best it can.