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With the abundance of website hosting and design platforms available these days, almost anyone can set up a website for their brand or business.
However, building a website that is both attractive AND effective is an entirely different task altogether.
There’s no point in putting up a website if it’s not going to help your business’s bottom line. A well-designed website will open many doors for your brand, so it’s an asset that’s definitely worth investing in.
Web Design Success Contributes to Business Success
If you had a physical store, you wouldn’t want its atmosphere to be boring, chaotic, or unfriendly. The same thing should apply to your website.
Simply put, excellent web design is a significant contributor to your business’s success. A poorly designed website can lead to:
- Higher bounce rates
- Lower conversion rates
- Lower customer satisfaction
- Damaged credibility
Follow These Web Design Best Practices Religiously
There are many things you can do to optimize your website. You can use a combination of various strategies to make your online presence as competitive as it can be. But while web design trends can vary from niche to niche, there are specific best practices that everyone could benefit from regardless of what industry you belong in.
Let’s take a look at four of them!
Consistent Branding
A strong brand identity is one of the most crucial elements of building a good impression and creating an impressive reputation. Branding promotes relationship-building with customers, fosters loyalty, and reinforces recall. That said, don’t miss out on remaining consistent with your brand when you design your website!
Your brand’s logo, visual identity, color schemes, and general design direction should all be present in your web design. And it’s not just about aesthetics. You should also remain true to your brand voice and messaging on your website. All of this will have a substantial impact on your brand equity.
Using Heatmaps
Heatmaps are a visual representation of where your customers spend their time on your website. By generating and studying heatmaps, you can:
- Figure out which elements of your site hamper the customer’s experience
- Identify which particular CTA placements and styles work most effectively
- Learn which features your customers use the most
There are many tools you can use to record website visitors and generate heatmaps. With this information, you’re empowered to improve your web design through data-driven decisions.
Engaging in Storytelling
Stories enable humans to relate to one another. This is why brand storytelling has risen to be a key driver in brand-building in the 21st century.
Brands with compelling stories command more attention, attract more loyalty, and create more meaningful impressions than brands without one. Attracting customers with facts and statistics will always be a foolproof strategy, but what separates decent companies from market leaders is how the latter can capitalize on storytelling to build a narrative that customers want to be a part of.
Mobile-First Design
Mobile devices drive a whopping 54.8% of global website traffic. More and more people rely on their phones and tablets to browse the internet, so it only makes sense to prioritize optimizing your website for mobile use.
This is a mistake that many companies still make. By ensuring a smooth, fuss-free, and overall pleasant user experience even when they’re visiting your site from their phones, you’re putting your business in an excellent position to get ahead of the competition. Hiring a professional UX design company boosts your chances of achieving this.
Conclusion
Web design, in theory, isn’t too complicated. You simply need to build a website that can provide seamless and intuitive experiences and highlight your products and services in the best possible way.
But we all know that in reality, making this happen isn’t as easy as designing a few pages and churning out copy. You will likely have to employ a variety of approaches to make your web design the best it can be. But remaining consistent in your branding, using heatmaps, engaging in storytelling, and optimizing for mobile use are four solid strategies you can start with.
You may also like: The Ultimate Guide to Starting a Web Design Business
Image source: Shutterstock.com
