Your brand’s website design will significantly impact your ability to reach your goals. Since your website represents your brand, anyone who interacts with it will use their experience to form an opinion of your business. To get the best results, focusing on the design of your website is one of many essential aspects you need to take your time on and test.
Leaving a great impression on your visitors can help establish customer loyalty and trust. This can then positively impact important KPIs like traffic, bounce rate, transactions, and conversions.
It’s crucial that you make time to create a website design that is easy to navigate, visually appealing, and that will be memorable to users for all the right reasons.
Use these tips to create a stunning website design that will impress your audience and keep them coming back.
Before getting down into the nitty-gritty design details, you first have to decide on a domain name for your website. This may be as easy as using your already existing brand’s name, but, if you don’t have a brand name yet, then you’ll need to do some thinking.
Since your domain name is one of the first things users see, it is responsible for creating a great first impression. Take your time and try out different options before settling on the perfect one.
A shorter domain name will be easier to remember and type out, ensuring users won’t have a hard time finding your site. It’s also important to use a unique name that won’t get confused with other brands.
While you want a unique domain name, this doesn’t mean you should make it complicated. Your domain name should be easy to spell, so try to avoid complicated spelling, slang, or made-up words. Avoid special characters like hyphens and numbers since these make a domain name even harder to remember.
A trendy word may seem fitting right now, but trends and slang change quite quickly. Opt for something timeless that won’t be embarrassing or seem out of touch later on. It’s also important to think about the future of your business. You don’t want to pick a domain name that will limit what your product offering is. Keep the name broad enough to give yourself space for future growth.
The domain extension may not seem all that important, but it can actually impact how users view your brand. Some of the most commonly used extensions are .com, .net, .org, and .co, but there are plenty more to choose from.
Source: https://growthbadger.com/top-level-domains/
Specialty extensions like .org or .edu are used for very specific purposes, so just be sure that the extension you use perfectly reflects what your brand is all about. For example, if you sell t-shirts but your extension is .edu, people will click away from your site because they think they’re being taken to an educational website.
Unfortunately, you may find that some of the domain names you’re interested in are already being used. Since this can happen often, it’s best to check that the domain you want is still available before you settle on it. Similarly, be sure your brand name isn’t already trademarked before you start using it.
Source: https://blog.placeit.net/create-custom-designs-for-your-shop/
Having a website is a must nowadays because most people spend a huge chunk of their lives online. From shopping to entertainment and even health appointments, everything is available through a screen as long as you have an internet connection.
Not only is having a website essential, but you have to have one that really stands out and creates a positive experience for users. Creating a branded experience that is memorable and that showcases your business in the best way possible will lead to returning customers and a growing customer base.
To create a website experience that your customers will remember, start by focusing on these elements:
All of these elements together can create a unique brand experience that will make your website memorable for everyone who interacts with it. This will ensure you are a customer’s first thought whenever they are on the hunt for products or services like the ones you offer.
If you decide that you want to use an eCommerce platform to build your website, you’re not alone. Tons of websites are built using eCommerce platforms because they make the process much easier and less time-consuming than coding a website from scratch.
We’re lucky that there are so many options to choose from, but this also means you have to set aside some time to research the different eCommerce platforms, what they offer, and what suits your brand the best.
Some key items to consider as you do your research are:
All eCommerce platforms can have a bit of a learning curve, but don’t let this discourage you. With practice, help from tutorials, and maybe even some assistance from customer support, you can build your website and customize it to your liking.
User experience is probably a term you’re used to hearing, especially when it comes to designing an effective website or building a mobile app. While most brands put heavy emphasis on getting their UX right, it’s not uncommon for them to focus on the wrong things.
In general terms, good UX should translate into giving your users exactly what they’re looking for through a seamless experience. This, of course, means that you have to get to know your target audience and their user journey. Get to know their values, abilities, and limitations to guide your design.
It helps to create user personas so that you have a specific user in mind when developing your website. Once these personas are complete, map out each user’s journey to get a super clear picture of how they will navigate your website and what issues they may run into along the way.
This can sound tedious and time-consuming, but getting to know your audience, their needs, and their journey can be eye-opening. Working without this information is like running a marathon without ever having run a day in your life. Once you’ve done the work to get to know your users, then the rest of the process will be easier because you’ll be armed with the information needed to make impactful decisions.
Source: https://venngage.com/blog/user-persona-examples/
You can break down your UX design further into four main factors. These four factors need to work together cohesively in order to achieve a great user experience:
Avoid rushing through anything as you work on your website design. Taking your time, testing your work, and documenting will all help you immensely in the future.
Beyond these four main components, there are some other more nitty-gritty items to take your time on:
It’s essential to use analytics and data to stay on top of things like bounce rates, cart abandonment, and general behavior so you know what’s working and what isn’t. You can use this information to determine where users are coming across obstacles. To avoid losing customers to the same issues, identify what isn’t working, make some updates, and test your results.
Testing should always be a part of the process so that you’re sure you’re getting closer to creating the most ideal user experience.
Even if you get the UX right, customers will still need to get in contact with you. They may have questions about products, a service, or even have valuable feedback for your brand.
Create an FAQ page to answer some of the most common questions, but don’t leave it at that. Be sure links to your customer support email or phone number are easy to find in your site’s navigation, whether that’s in your website’s menu or the footer. It can be very frustrating to have a question that isn’t being answered and no support options available.
Another option is to include a chatbot on your website. This makes it even easier to talk to a support person who can provide assistance quickly.
Always take your customers' questions and comments graciously and offer them the best service possible. Do your best to respond in a timely manner so that you don’t lose a potential customer. The service you provide will help strengthen your brand’s reputation, which is important for customer retention.
Optimizing your website for search engines is crucial if you want to bring in organic traffic. There are tons of little things you can do to ensure your website is noticed by search engines and recommended on search engine results pages.
Some aspects of SEO are easy to take care of on your own and get easier with practice. There are others that are more technical and will require help from someone with more experience.
To get started, here are some basic search engine optimization strategies you can start with.
While search engines look at your entire website, what ranks are the individual pages. On-page SEO involves making adjustments to these individual pages to ensure they’re search engine friendly and easy to navigate for your customers. Some aspects of on-page SEO include:
This can be considered a subset of on-page SEO but it has more to do with written content in something like a blog linked to your website. To achieve great content that ranks higher, use these tips:
As its name states, technical SEO deals with more technical aspects of your website that can help it rank higher in SERPs. If you don’t have experience with these technical aspects, it’s a good idea to hire someone to take care of them for you. Some basic tasks to take into consideration are:
Source: https://seranking.com/blog/website-structure/
There’s a lot more to SEO than this, so be sure you do your research on how to optimize your website. Since things can change quickly, be sure to stay up to date on the latest Google updates so that your website doesn’t fall behind.
Source: https://placeit.net/digital-mockups
Nowadays, brands must have an online presence outside of their website. Luckily, it’s super easy to create business accounts on just about any social media platform out there.
You may be wondering what social media has to do with your website design, but hear us out!
After creating your social media accounts and coming up with a strategy for them, add links to them in your website’s footer. This will encourage your customers to head over to your profiles and interact with you.
Of course, this means you’ll have to post social content that is engaging, informative, entertaining, or that simply appeals to your niche. You can encourage engagement by hosting giveaways, asking for feedback, or running other types of social promotions your audience will want to participate in.
As your engagement and following grow, this can mean more traffic to your website and more interest in your brand. For returning customers who follow you on social media, this can lead to brand loyalty and can even lead some customers towards becoming affiliates or ambassadors for your brand.
You can also take user-generated content that is posted on social media and feature it on your website. Reviews and images of real people wearing your products can be posted on product pages, giving your products more legitimacy. Just be sure to ask permission before posting!
Creating a website for your brand can take some time and some effort, but the end result will be worth it!
Avoid rushing your website design, even when it comes to smaller details you think aren’t that important. In the end, all of these details will add up and you’ll be happy you took the time to get them just right.
Not only should your website look great, but it should also function seamlessly and give customers what they’re looking for without a struggle. This can lead to better conversion rates, lower bounce rates, and increased customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Test everything along the way, whether it’s a small change in navigation or a revamp of your copy. Document these changes, the testing process, and the results for future reference.
This can all feel like a lot, but you’ll be happy you took the time to do it all once your website is up and running.
Author Bio:
Roberta Camarena is a marketing professional with expertise in organic content creation. She is currently a content marketer at Placeit, an online design tool and mockup generator. On the weekends, you can find her at a neighborhood cafe getting some writing done and getting distracted by dogs.