Want to build a business website that offers an excellent user experience? Here are the seven golden rules you should keep in mind.
Did you know that your website is a direct representation of your business? Don’t believe us? Data shows that 94% first impressions about your business relate to your site’s web design. That’s right! When users find your business for the first time and enter your website, you have only a few minutes to impress them.
Thus, if you fail to build a great website for your business, you’ll be missing out on a lot of sales opportunities. Here are the seven golden rules you should respect to create an impactful web design:
1. Make it responsive
If you fail to make your website responsive, you’ll be leaving money on the table because your customers will bounce and do shop with your competitors.
Data shows that slow-loading websites accumulate a $2.6 billion revenue loss every year. Yes, you’ve heard that right! And that’s because 83% of Internet users expect a website to load in 3 seconds or less.
Today, customers are living in a fast-moving era where everything happens really quickly, thanks to technology. So, it’s no surprise that they get frustrated when they have to wait more than a few seconds for a website to load.
Now, who do you make sure that your website will be responsive? From adopting a fluid grid to optimizing your site for mobile devices, paying attention to image sizing, and using a minimalist design, these are all strategies that will help you build a responsive website for your business.
What’s more, it’s essential to mention that a responsive website is also mobile-friendly. In fact, it seems that mobile-friendliness has become so important to today’s consumers that 74% of them are more likely to come back to a mobile-friendly website.
But what mobile-friendliness mean? It means that your website should display content correctly regardless of the screen of the device users search on. Yet, this doesn’t mean that you should replicate your website exactly from one device to another. In fact, this might not even be necessary since mobile users often use their mobile to find out key information such as contact details or the cost of a product.
You can, instead, condense your menu or navigational options into one button. You can also include or leave out certain elements. Plus, you must optimize it to allow for touchscreens, meaning that your website’s buttons should be big enough to be easy to press them with a fingertip on touchscreen devices.
2. Make it easy to navigate
A good business website is easy to navigate.
Your goal is to attract potential buyers on your website and have them do the things you want them to do, be it purchase products, fill out forms, or sign up. Thus, visitors should not find it difficult to navigate your website from one page to another because they will get frustrated and leave in no time. What’s more, attracting frustrated visitors to bounce back to your business is extremely difficult. So, you need to make a good first impression if you want them to keep coming back.
We advise you to stick to the standard practices when it comes to navigation because if you try to reinvent the wheel, you may confuse your visitors and make them leave your site.
From including a site map and a search bar to using dropdowns with clear headings that appear on every page, these are all good practices to make your website easy to navigate.
3. Create an About us page
With so many brands out there, customers love to get more personal to the businesses they buy from by being able to put a face to that business. So, an About us page is key to help them find out more about the people behind your company, its history, its core values, and what drives it.
An About us page will not only help customers to connect with your business on a more personal level, but it will also help you differentiate from your competitors. What’s more, it also makes your business look more legitimate, relatable, and reliable, helping you gain your visitors’ trust.
4. Link your social media
Speaking of linking your social media on your website, this is a great marketing opportunity you shouldn’t miss.
You’re most likely already marketing your products or services on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. If you do so, you can use your website as a marketing tool as well by linking your social media on it. It will help you build up followers while you are also reaching customers.
5. Pepper your website with various calls-to-action
Once you have succeeded in attracting potential customers on your website, it’s time to make sure that they convert into buyers. How do you do that? By peppering your website’s content with various calls-to-action that tell users what to do next.
You can ask them to sign up for your newsletter, request a free estimate for your product, or to follow you on Facebook.
6. Include your company’s contact information
Why even have a website if potential customers won’t know how to reach you? Even if you are an e-commerce business and customers can simply purchase your products online, you must still include your contact info. Why? Because customers need to know that they can reach out to you anytime if they have a question or a problem.
So, make sure you don’t forget about including a page that will contain all your contact information, including address, phone number, e-mail address, and even links to your social media.
7. Test it
Last but not least, you can’t say that your website is done until you have tested it. Experts at Testmate share a detailed step-by-step guide on how to conduct user testing to make sure your website works correctly and that there are no issues that need to be fixed.
Using these seven golden rules of website design will help you build a successful site for your business that will attract potential buyers, engage them, and keep them coming back to your brand.