With many businesses transitioning to the Internet, having a company website is becoming more of a necessity than a choice. The good news is, you don’t need to hire a tech whizz or purchase state-of-the-art tools to make one.
The Essential Steps
Most guides will tell you that there are eight stages between you and a functional, actionable website. In a nutshell, here are the steps you’ll have to take:
- Defining the website purpose
- Latest design trend research
- Picking a platform
- Customizing a template
- Developing your branding strategy
- Adding and optimizing content
- Publishing the website
- Analysis and improvement
If you’re inexperienced, each stage will require in-depth research. While you do it, abiding by the following rules can boost your efficiency.
User-Centric Design
When imagining the page you want to create, consider the people who’ll use it.
In general, customers glance at new sites, click on the first thing that catches their interest, and disregard the rest. So, your design must be user-centric, with useful, engaging, and clickable elements.
The basics of user behaviour for you to understand and keep in mind include:
- They scan text, not read it
- They are impatient
- They appreciate quality and credibility
- They want to have control
As a rule of thumb, make your page straightforward, usable, self-explanatory, and unobtrusive.
Website design conventions can help you a great deal. You might think that a conventional site scheme results in a boring product, but templates reduce the learning curve. You don’t have to follow them to the T but apply all the basic principles.
Efficient Writing
The writing style of your website content needs to match user preferences and browsing habits. They won’t read promotional writing or long blocks of text without images, keywords and marked elements.
What this means for you is that using concise phrases is critical, especially on the landing page. Make the layout scannable with content divided into categories, multiple heading levels and visual elements.
Moreover, when incorporating any call-to-action, do so naturally. Sounding too promotional can make people browse elsewhere.
Here, you also have to remember that the specifics highly depend on your target audience and product. As experts from clickintelligence.co explain, understanding your industry and target demographics lets you create campaigns that the right people will see.
Tested Elements Only
Finally, the TETO principle should be a must in your book. Testing before launching can help you avoid common pitfalls and create a positive first impression.
Start by checking the usability. You can do so by having people with little website experience browse through it.
Once you design an element, test it, and if you find an issue, perform another inspection after you resolve it. You might overlook some essential elements or errors during the first round.
Ideally, you’ll also have another person to review the code. If you’re creating the website yourself, after you’ve worked on it for a while, you won’t be able to spot all the flaws. A fresh set of eyes will pick up things you may have glanced over.
Conclusion
Remember – the effectiveness of your web design is for your users to tell, not yourself. Make it look good and easy to use, and you’ll yield much better results in the long run. Apply this guide to your ideas to make them come to life in a user-friendly way that promises success.