When it comes to creating a website correctly, it can be quite a challenge.
The reality is that when a visitor arrives on your page, you only have a short amount of time, anywhere from 2 to 5 seconds, to grab their attention. This means everything on your site must be on point. A big issue is load speed. If your website takes forever to load, then you’ve already lost the visitor before you’re given a chance to impress them.
When we look at the world of technology and all the drastic changes it’s going through and continues to go through, we can argue that it’s not helping matters. A new trend can come along and automatically make your website dated, leaving you with only a fraction of the visitors you once got.
So what can you do to fix this problem and salvage the situation with your website? What can you do to create a site that functions correctly, looks great, and conveys the right message, clearly, to your visitors?
You could redesign your website and avoid web design mistakes in its entirety, but that’s not always a viable option, especially if you have a fairly large site. A full site redesign can be very time-consuming and rather expensive, which means, not only will you have to put money down for the redesign, but you’ll also have to deal with financial loss when your site is offline.
That said, even if redesigning your website isn’t something on the cards for you, there are still things that you can do. There are still many things that you can do to enhance your site, without having to lose visitors or spend a considerable sum of money.
Below I will be covering 5 ways that you can enhance your site, giving you tips on things you can do to immediately get the most out of it. I’ve covered a fairly broad range of things, to ensure that there’s at least something that you can apply to your site.
So, continue reading for those much-desired tips.
- Make Your Site Easy To Use
Most visitors can only be categorized as impatient, which means, you don’t want your site to be slow or hard to navigate, otherwise you’ll lose them. Make sure your navigation menu is obvious and easy to spot. Position it ideally towards the top of the page. You should also have the correct links, on each page so that the visitor can easily switch to related content. Lastly, you want to stick with the website conventions. So, for example, if you have any text that is underlined, people are naturally going to expect it to be a link.
- Write with the Reader in Mind
When writing anything for your website, you also want to think about who you intend to read it. Although it may be tempting, to add as much depth to your writing. What you want to do is keep things concise and easy to understand. If you’re forced to use technical terms, then consider providing a glossary – just so people will have a point of reference. If you intend to attract visitors using the search engines, then you will need to consider the kinds of keywords the end user may search on, when looking for your content. Once you settle on a keyword, you’ll have to include it in the text as much as possible, but not too much – as you want to keep it natural. And you don’t want the search engines to see your content as spam.
- Simplify Your Navigation
If you want to avoid losing visitors, due to having a site that isn’t easy to navigate through, then your best option will be to streamline it as much as possible. You’ll want your navigation to have no more than seven items in it. The idea is to make it simpler, so people can move around your site seamlessly. Consider going with a fixed navigation bar, and use descriptive labels. This way, you can count on your visitors remaining on your site for more than 5 seconds.
- Use a Clear Call to Action (CTA)
Does it matter whether you have a CTA button on your pages? Does altering the color of this button change the way people interact with it? The answer is YES. Studies have shown that CTA buttons that are orange tend to increase conversions by around 30%, while red buttons can boost site conversions by around 20%. Depending on the size of your site, that can be a significant increase in revenue. In addition, if you want to boost your conversions even more, then you should use actionable words in your CTA button, like learn, start, discover, etc.
- Embrace White Spaces
Whitespace is one of the most important design elements of a website, as it helps break up the page, increasing its readability. Another term for white space is negative space, and it’s a term used to describe the areas around the page elements, that are lacking visual items and/or content.
Whitespace typically plays a significant role in the positioning and design process of site elements. While having more whitespace will determine which sections are which, it will also guide the user’s eye. Having less whitespace, on the other hand, can help dictate which elements on the page belong to one another, due to their proximity.
You can find many websites out there that do an excellent job in this area. You want your sections to be separated clearly and concisely so that it properly fit into the user’s viewport. Always ensure none of your sections are too overcrowded.
When done correctly, it should aid the visitor in focusing on each section of your website, letting them know, almost instantly, where a paragraph begins and where it ends. This can be increasingly beneficial when used to guide the user’s eye to important areas of your website, such as a value proposition or a call to action.
If you need additional help and examples of well-designed websites, then I suggest you go that little bit further and do more research on the topic.
–AUTHOR INFO—
Uchenna Ani-Okoye is a former IT Manager who now runs his computer support website: www.compuchenna.co.uk.
