When you’re selling a product or a service online, the appearance of your website is paramount if you want to give a good impression. Advertisements and other forms of marketing can only get people in the door; once they are on your website, you want them to be glad that they came. Having a well-designed website will not only be attractive and appealing to your customers, it will also signal to them that you are tech-savvy and will be able to satisfy their needs. So you should never skimp and, if you can, let a professional website design company in Jacksonville, FL take care of it. Here are a few fundamental rules of professional website design.
Less is More
Having a lot of stuff going on your website is the biggest thing to avoid. Gone are the days of Myspace and Geocities pages, flashing their lights and playing their music whenever you logged on. The human race has collectively agreed that such things were an annoyance, and universally, consumers prefer a minimalistic website design that doesn’t assault their senses. Titles and headlines are preferable to big blocks of text, and try to incorporate vibrant colors and images into your website. Going onto your website should be a relaxing experience, not a stressful one.
Be Well Organized
The direct counter to the previous point, you cannot be minimalistic to a fault. You have to make sure that anyone who goes onto the website has a clear idea of how to navigate it and where to find what they are looking for. Always use words instead of images if you need to express an abstract concept; for example, if you have a link to contact you, just have it say “Contact Us,” don’t replace it with an image of a woman on the phone. As a good litmus test, have the least tech-savvy person you know sign onto your website, and see how difficult it is for them to navigate it.
Be Mobile Friendly
Nowadays, less and less of your potential customers will be accessing your website from computer terminals, and instead will be clicking through to get there on their smartphones. That means you need to have a website that’s easy to navigate on mobile. What it does not mean is to provide the potential customer with an app to better navigate your website, because if they aren’t sold on the idea of you yet, they aren’t going to clutter their smartphone with another app. Your website needs to stand as mobile friendly on its own.