8 Design Tips to Take Your Business’s Website to the Next Level

As a parent who is running a home business, or even a small business with a physical location such as a storefront, you probably already know that it can be a lot to juggle. From having to take care of your personal life, and manage the home and family, then you’re juggling your home business and what’s being thrown at you there. It’s a lot to handle from time to time, and it can even be considered a little too overwhelming from time to time. Regardless, running a business is one of the most rewarding things that anyone can do. Especially as a parent, it can hold a strong meaning because you’re proving that you can raise a beautiful family, and manage your home, all while managing your successful business as well. Now, who wouldn’t want that?

With that said, when running a business, there is a lot that needs to be taken into account such as what you’re selling, how you’re marketing yourself,  what you’re selling, the customer experience, and also your website. Nowadays, a website is one of the most important components of having a business, which is why so many business owners turn to companies that offer web design in melbourne, and in their area, to assist them in creating the best website. 

Your site’s design is how your business will get judged by potential customers, and also where people can get information about your product or service. If you run a medical practice, for example, it’s unlikely people will want to visit you unless your website looks professional. Of course, you can use medical seo from Tebra for example, to boost traffic to your site, but you’ll need to use this in conjunction with good web design. Once your website is looking good, you can focus on SEO to drive as many people towards it as possible. Nowadays, it’s totally rare for a business to be able to thrive without having a website.

This may sound tough to run your household, be there for your family, run your business, and try to run the website of your business at the same time. It can be a lot to take in.  But in general, it’s going to be worth it, especially if you’re able to get around to taking your website to the next level. 

Customers and your audience as a whole will love getting impressed. Having a beautiful website with impeccable design elements will strongly reflect your brand, and it will also excite your customers as well. So these are some helpful tips for taking your website to the next level so your business can really shine!

Ensure that your website loads quickly

Your website has to load fast! But how fast? Basically, very fast, try to aim for no more than three seconds to get your website fully loaded.  The average shopper expects websites to be loaded up in full in two seconds or even less! It sounds wild, and it even sounds impossible right? Well, it most certainly can be done. Unfortunately, there are consequences to having a slow website. For one, it will affect your website’s SEO meaning that your ranking on search engines such as Google will get lower over time. Sometimes it gets immediately get low, this is something you do not want as it means your competitors will have the upper hand

Another reason you’ll want to avoid having a slow website is the fact that people nowadays are fairly impatient I tried website hosting tutorials to help educate me. If a customer is having to wait far too long for a web page to load, they’re just going to exit and find somewhere that will sell a similar service. So you must keep this in mind whenever you’re working on your website. It needs to be fast so your visitor retention rates are high, but you’ll want a fast website so your website rankings will stay fine as well.

Website Design Tips – Avoid Giant Walls of Text

Nobody has time to read long blocks of text! Moreover, loading web design with too much text will also affect user experience (UX). To ensure optimum user experience, you must use as few words as possible, be as understanding as possible, and think about web design too. It may sound tricky, but you can easily get an idea by visiting your favourite websites. Even take a look at some of your competitor’s websites.

Are there any giant walls of text? Most likely there aren’t. Of course, there will be some pages where it’s totally fine to post lengthy text, such as blog posts, tutorials, instructions, and other important information. But even then, you should use imagery to make your content engaging. Ensure an engaging web design by keeping text content brief and using relevant images. If you are having trouble finding relevant imagery, reverse image search will be a perfect solution. 

You may have an idea about the images that will be relevant to your web design and the text posted on it. Simply pick a random one and perform a search using it as a query on an efficient reverse image search utility. You will see multiple visually similar search results. All you need to do is find some relevant visuals that fall under the ‘Public Usage’ and ‘Creative Commons’ category, and you will have many relevant images usable on your website for free.

Website Design Tips – Always think about the user experience

You’ll want to ensure that your website is constantly easy to navigate for your customers. If it’s going to be far too confusing then there is a very high chance that your customers are going to click out of your website. This is something you’ll want to avoid at all costs! So try to find ways where the user experience will be good. Some ideas and helpful elements that a good user-oriented experience will have can include

• Good colour scheme (but not overly colourful)
• Chat for websites
• Nice design elements
• Not too many buttons to links
• Search bar feature
• Important Pages on the menu such as About Us and Contact
• Footer bar containing links
• No broken links or buttons
• Contact form

There are other helpful elements that can make a massive difference in the quality of the website and the user experience as well. Just make sure to take a good look, evaluate what your website needs and what can be looked into.  It may even be handy to create a checklist of what you’re wanting for your website, and what can help your website boost the user experience.

Optimising the website for mobile and tablet

Did you know that around 45% to 50% of users are now using mobile devices such as their phone or tablet when accessing the web? This is only growing which means that your website must become user-friendly for a variety of devices. Just like a visitor will quickly leave your website if it’s too slow, they’ll also leave it if it is going to be too hard to navigate while. 

So it’s so important to optimise your website for these visitors. Depending on how your website is laid out, there is a chance that it’s already optimised but it’s best to always double-check. If you’re using WordPress themes or even SquareSpace, those are usually mobile-friendly already.

Website Design Tips – Don’t be afraid to blog

Content is king, and this is constantly being proved time and time again. Most websites will have an option for creating blog posts and you should not neglect this whatsoever.  Great blog content can drive additional traffic to your website. Thanks to the power of SEO, if someone is searching for something in particular and finds your website then this opens you to the possibilities of getting more visitors. 

You’ll just want to make sure that you’re producing high-quality content for your audience. So skip out on anything generic that’s already been written before. Instead, you’ll want to write about topics that are not getting addressed.

Website Design Tips – Produce more content

Just like blog posts are very important pieces of content that a website should have, there are so many other types of content that you should feel free to produce as well. You’ll want to create high-quality, engaged-worthy content for your audience. They should be able to learn from this, it should be of value to them.

 This will not only allow visitors to come back to your website for more, but this is also going to instill trust. If your free content is going to be high quality and value, then just imagine who your product is for sale, right? So some helpful ideas for creating engaging and valuable content for your audience (for free) can include

• Videos, such as tutorials
• Podcasts
• Infographics
• Ebook
• Checklist
• Workbook
• Class
• Mini newsletter course

These are only a few ideas, but the possibilities can truly be endless for what you can provide to your audience for free. So don’t be afraid to create some content for your visitors, because you never know who it may attract.

Always do alt text

What is alt text? Well if you have images on your website, you’ll want to write descriptions of what they are. So this is essentially what alt text is. It’s not exactly the same as a caption of an image. These are helpful for those who are blind, but it’s also helpful for SEO as well. It’s one of those small tips that tend to get looked over. So make sure to not forget about this. If you’re able to, try to fill in the alt text for all of your images.

Website Design Tips – Be wise with your domain

This may not be the best advice if your website and business are already established. But if you’re just starting out with your business or if you haven’t begun yet, this can be helpful. You want to avoid making your domain name long. Even when it comes to your web pages such as About, Contact, Blog, etc. 

You should make your domain name short and sweet, and all of your URLs should be the same. For instance, if you’re writing a blog about “How to utilise social media”, you’ll instead want to shorten the URL to something such as “Social Media Tips”. This is great for SEO, but this can be helpful for past visitors as well if they’re needing to go back to your website. In short, your URL should be memorable, and the same for your URLs as well.