The very first point of call between your business and your potential customers will very often be your website. It’s natural, then, to want to make sure that your site makes the absolute best first impression it can, in order to better increase the chances that those potential customers will turn into real ones. However, this is often easier said than done; in today’s times when trends are changing very quickly and very frequently, it can be difficult to know just exactly what format and layout is going to be effective. In reality, however, it’s quite easy to build a website that will prove friendly and welcoming to all those who visit it, as long as you don’t go overboard in your designs. Just by following the few simple tips laid out in this article, you will be seeing yourself in good stead to creating a website you can both be truly proud of, and rest assured knowing that it will serve as an impressive face for your business or company.
Fonts
When selecting the fonts you wish to use for your website, stick to a select two or three. You don’t want a dozen alternate styles cluttering up your web page that might conflict and clash with one another. Keep your fonts simple, and consistent throughout all the various pages of your site. Always ensure that they are easy to read, and that whatever backgrounds they are set against, they don’t serve to obscure the words in any way. If you find anything on your website even the tiniest bit difficult to read, switch it out for a different one. However, you can and should experiment with the wide range of different fonts which are now out there. Try and find one that suits the tone and voice of the rest of your site, and of your business in general, while not going overboard in this respect. Furthermore, selecting a set of lettering which is outside the set of standard fonts will help your site stand out, and avoids the trap of using a font which is used too often by countless businesses and organizations that the public is sick to death of looking at it. This means definitely no comic sans under any circumstances.
Modern, simple and eye-catching logo
Your business’s logo should be featured prominently on your site, but simply having and displaying your logo isn’t enough; you need to make sure it’s an effective and eye-catching one, too. Ensure that your logo doesn’t clash with the overall aesthetic of your site, while it also should not appear overly dated. Simple, of course, is usually always better, but as things move on so quickly online, designs from as recently as five or six years ago might be considered dated, so it’s difficult to know exactly what’s going to work best for you. However, there are very useful online facilities you can make use of in order to design your own logo. Such sites will provide the tools and the framework for designing or updating your business’s logo, taking a great deal of the stress out of the whole experience. However, at the end of the day, the essential design at its roots will be up to you as the business owner, so you should consider carefully what you want your logo to express and what kind of impression you want it to give about your business. A really effective, well-designed logo will serve to lodge itself in a customers’ mind so that they will be more likely to return to you in the future, so it’s a good practice to do a little research and see which logos you, yourself, find to be truly memorable.
Visuals
A good website should feature visuals prominently, as this helps add a little variety to your site as opposed to one that was, say, only text, which was more common for websites in the nineties. This means you should feature a fair amount of photos and other pictures on your site- of any products you sell, physical businesses you own, or satisfied employees and previous customers. However, not just any old photo taken on your cell phone will do – you need to aim for quality. That doesn’t mean you can’t take them yourself, but you need a decent camera to do some and someone who knows how to work it. A touch-up on some photo editing software will not hurt, either. However, if this all seems way above your capabilities, you could consider hiring a professional photographer to really ensure you’re going to get a seal of quality for the majority of the visuals for your site. Utilizing large pictures as website backgrounds is often popular, although even if you don’t go for this, a sleek, clean design throughout your page is the most effective way to go.
Mobile-friendly
In the past few years, the number of people browsing the internet on their phones or other mobile devices has actually overtaken the amount who browse via their desktop. This means that a great many, if not the majority, of your potential customers, are going to be viewing your website on devices other than their main computer. As a result, you need to ensure you’ve got a mobile-friendly version of your site on the go. There’s very little that’s going to turn off a potential customer faster than having to awkwardly zoom in and click on small links that simply weren’t built for their finger to navigate through. If something proves too difficult, the chances are that they’re not going to persevere with it, and simply give up.
Having a mobile version of your website ready to go with dramatically increase the number of people who will be able to find the information they’re looking for successfully, whether they’re browsing on a computer or not, and help your business reach a wider audience of people. Plus, it’s simply a good modern practice to have a site which functions across the complete range of internet-capable devices.
