A successful way to keep visitors on your website is by paying attention to detail and ultimately building a great looking website!
80% of people who will visit your website will spend most of their time above the fold (that should up on the upper part of the screen without scrolling down).
It’s in the basics such as layout, great looking graphics, nice size text that is easy to read, and other web design tips you should not overlook.
How Do The Web Design Pros Do It?
If you want to make sure your visitors don’t bounce and leave your site within seconds, you better make sure you do the little things right and pay attention to each individual detail from the font, how responsive the design is to mobile browsers, right through to social media marketing.
After the website design has been completed don’t forget to test it on different browsers like IE, Firefox, and Google Chrome. Also test on a variety of devices such as Android, iPhone, and Samsung to make sure the text is the correct size and that all the graphics show up properly.
Continue to learn better design by reading articles on a variety of web design blogs and tutorial sites. Include search engine optimization to your bag of tricks so that your customers website will get ranked well in search engines.
Last but not least, when creating a great looking website, make sure to add the social media marketing aspect. Everyone is hooked on social media so make sure you provide a way of sharing posts via Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, and LinkedIn for starters.
There are a log of plugins and widgets available for WordPress that will provide social sharing code at the beginning or end of a post.
Here are a few useful tips below that may make the difference between zero sales and being a very competitive web design company.
Related: Free Social Media eBooks
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Logo
The first rule of thumb when developing a great looking website, have a professional, polished looking logo.
Your logo is one of the most important items to your overall brand awareness, so make sure it’s designed with appeal in mind and be in a prominent position on the homepage of your site, preferably high and to the left or center.
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Navigation
Keep the navigation bar (menu) also in a prominent position towards the top and middle area. This is where people expect to see it and will ultimately look for it in that area. You may also want to consider a secondary menu in the sub-page area either on the side widget area, if you are using WordPress for example, or towards the bottom of the site. That way your visitors don’t have to scroll all the way back up to find your sales or products page in order to purchase your products or services.
This is a no brainer, just one more simple step that can make a simple visit to your website a pleasurable experience. Users will remember this down the road and oftentimes will mention your site to someone without even hesitating.
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Clutter
This is a great way to keep your site looking fresh and uncluttered. Remove ads if there are too many and especially “calls to action” can seem overwhelming to visitors who are simply looking for your services page or a phone number. Remove any graphics that are absolutely necessary to the brand you are trying to promote – think minimalist.
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Photography and Video
Bad looking photos will tend to make your site look non-professional. You’ll want to use professional photos and videos always on your site. You can do them yourself you feel you have the skills. Just create a few logos or banners and have friends or other mentors/peers give you their honest opinion. This goes for videos as well. Nowadays, video testimonials are right up there with brand awareness so make them pop.
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Fonts
Keep fonts large and easy to read. That was simple right? People tend to overthink this and start looking for grungy fonts or fonts that have nothing to do with the style of the website. So try match up the font with the brand. If you are creating a website for a real estate company, you’ll probably want to stay away from grunge or zombie-style fonts. Always match up the font with the style of the website. We are thinking brand here and not how fancy we can make the site.
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Call-To-Action
If you are going to use the call-to-action in the home page area, visitors expect to see it in the upper portion of the site including the email address and phone, usually.
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Sliders
You will find when browsing the internet these days that most modern design will have a slider in the upper portion of the website with several banners scrolling at random speeds often separated by a 4-5 second pause between each transition.
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Responsive Design
Building a responsive website means that it has to adapt to a variety of mobile devices and browsers. Responsive web design is now one of the definitive tools that webmasters can contribute to the value of a site. Making a site mobile friendly is usually done through the use of several alternative CSS sheets that are called upon depending on the device or browser that is being used. This will make for a great viewing experience for the visitors to your website.
In Closing
Remember, simplicity is key when designing a great looking website! Don’t have an over-cluttered site with confusion navigation and too may call-to-action or Ad areas like Adsense or Clickbank. Get rid of unnecessary elements and replace them with simple graphics with nice looking fonts and colors.
Make sure each page of your website pops, just like the home-page. Someone might land on the contact page from an iPhone 4 and cannot actually see the menu for some reason, and before they can check out your services page, they get frustrated and bounce. Say goodbye to that paycheck! You get the picture.