Having a good website becomes more and more important as we delve deeper into a digital world. A website that is well-put-together and easy to navigate can help steer site visitors towards the information they are looking for. It also leaves a positive impression; a good website shows that you care enough to make this process easy for your site visitors by giving them information that is easy to navigate, organized, pleasing to the eye. It shows you have put in more effort for them so they can put in less. You want to show that the experience of working with you is as comfortable to work with as your website.
As we truly believe in making the process as streamlined as possible, we spent the last months of 2016 updating our site and researching the best ways to make the best website for our clients. With our new relaunch, we felt it was only fair we shared the top tips we found.
Improving Layout of the Website
- Less scrolling is better – Don’t make your site visitors do more work to get the information they’re looking for. Think about how many times you’ve left a website because you spent too much time scrolling down a page and could not find what you were looking for. It may seem like a small matter, but the little things always add up.
- Search Engine – Your visitors may be in a pinch and want to find something on your site ASAP. Give them a search feature to make this as easy and as fast as possible.
- Social Buttons – Many people use social media as a quick way to understand what you offer. Place social buttons on the header or footer of every page to make their search for your social easy. As most other sites have their social buttons here, this will be the first place your site visitors look.
Improving the Copy
- Less is more – Be concise. If visitors see a ton of words, they will give up quickly. They don’t want to spend more time than necessary to find information. If they can’t find it quickly on your website, they will go to someone else’s. Try to keep your words to a minimum.
- Make your point – Be efficient, but be effective. With only a few sentences to share the information, it’s important to make those few sentences count! Put yourself in the shoes of your site visitor and share the information you know they would be looking for.
Improving the Pictures
- Keep it clean and simple – As you will be using fewer words, pictures are your chance to share the information that words may not capture concisely. The pictures that are clean and simple are the easiest to understand.
- Use High Quality Pictures – No one wants to see a 17 KB picture. In 2017, we want the highest resolution picture we can find. The photo should have a resolution of 72 ppi or have a file size over 100 KB.
- Show Variety – With varied pictures, you not only keep your site visually interesting, but you also demonstrate the diversity of your offerings. Just be sure that the style is not too varied and has some consistency. For example, you would not want to have one brightly colored picture when all of your pictures are in black and white.
Check out the rest of our newly revamped site to see how we put these recommendations into effect!