For any entrepreneur, a website is one of the most essential tools to draw attention to your business. With that being said, a web design needs to have a few essential elements for it to be effective. It is often challenging to determine the right elements to include in a website design, especially when taking the branding, marketing objectives, and business objectives into account in the design.
Nonetheless, the optimization of these elements is vital to the smoothness of the user’s experience, which plays a major role in the failure or success of the website. Let’s consider the 6 essential elements of a successful web design:
With our smartphone-oriented society, many business transactions now take place on mobile phones, hence the need to accommodate website viewing on an array of devices. Mobile responsiveness allows for a richer user experience by optimizing the website’s functions and aesthetics for any device in use. A mobile responsive site keeps the audience engaged for a longer time. And the longer your audience is engaged with your website, the more opportunities your business will get.
It is common for users not to believe or trust a business that does not have a mobile responsive web design. It seems to give off a lack of thought and effort by the company that may spell trouble for visitors even if the business is completely legitimate and honest. Thus, any website should be able to accommodate all devices including tablets and mobile phones of different brands.
When designing a website, it is necessary to keep your customers and audience in mind. Making your website’s navigation easy and smooth encourages users to interact and engage with your website.
It is important to note that search engine rankings are also affected by user-friendly designs. If users can’t instantly locate what they are searching for, they will quickly bounce away without a second thought. Google will then take this data and come to a conclusion that your visitors are not liking what they see. Ultimately, your organic rankings may suffer.
Any website should include:
Can you personally say that you like websites that seem to take forever to load? We didn’t think so. No visitor has been or will ever be impressed by a website that takes too long to load. Internet users are restless, and they need information quickly. Pages with a slow loading time will drive visitors away. In fact, a study shows that internet users are only willing to wait 2 seconds before abandoning a website. Therefore, any website that takes any more time to load will lose a lot of potential clients.
When designing a website, it is essential to ensure that the website pages are lean and functional. You may opt to remove any large videos or image files that take time to load and avoid uploading large media content in general.
Remember that your content is the pillar of your website. It is important to include high-quality content in your website that is optimized for SEO. Any website content needs to be engaging, informative, and relevant as it plays a critical role in search engine placement.
Interesting content engages your users. It helps in building trust amongst your users and helps in establishing yourself as an expert. Any website content should be concise, informative, and easy to read. This content can be in the form of webpages and blogs. A website is not solely a means for offering media for consumption; it should also help in providing valuable knowledge to its readers.
Lastly, the format in which you present your content matters. Any text content can be in the form of bullet points, lists, or short paragraphs which are easy to read and can help in the success of the website.
So far, we’ve learned that the most important elements of a website design are the design itself and the content. But if no one can find the website, what will all the hard work you put into these elements be for? It’s no wonder search engine optimization is something that gives recognition to a website.
Every website should have a focus keyword and it should be appropriately placed in the content. This might be a tedious process but it is essential for the success of a website. SEO takes time and should be done on a regular basis. An SEO-friendly design provides a big push to a website; it helps in ranking the website and brings in relevant traffic which further helps in conversions. An SEO-friendly design is essential for the success of a website.
A website design plays a huge role in converting visitors to leads. Websites connect people with your services, products, and content. Conversions can happen through subscriptions, whitepapers, downloadable eBooks, and email newsletters. All these will be successful only when there is a good call to action.
A call to action usually comes in the form of a button that prompts the user to act, whether it’s to sign up for a newsletter or purchase a product or subscription. The call to action needs to be incorporated into the website design. This is critical for obtaining visitors’ contact information so that you can continue to communicate with them and try to convert the leads to customers.
As we discussed the most essential elements of web design, you should note that there are additional equally important elements worth considering as well. Each website’s elements will vary based on a company’s unique objectives, so a truly successful web design is that which stems from careful planning and research.
Nevertheless, these essential elements provide a basic outline to give your website the backbone it needs to become the lead conversion powerhouse you dream for it to be.