Photo by Burst on Unsplash
Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the digital age! Just about everyone has a smartphone, tablet, or laptop. People use the internet to socialize, play games, and shop, among other things.
If you have a website, you know there is a lot of work that goes into making the site a masterpiece. If you are a designer, you hopefully know the dos and don’ts of design. If not, here are some website factors that will help set your website apart.
Visual Appeal
Have you ever gone to a website and cringed when it loaded? I definitely have. In this digital age, there is no acceptable excuse for your website looking like it was done by a beginner who is learning to code.
Your website needs to be clean, simple, and eye-catching. The color scheme should match your brand, but make sure that it goes well together, especially since colors can appear different online than they do in other mediums.
I think most websites need a modern look. Even sites with brands or services that reflect older or vintage products should have a website that showcases it in an appealing way. Modern style websites utilize slideshows and banners to showcase high-quality pictures and videos. It is appealing, interesting, and doesn’t look like it was designed 30 years ago.
Accessibility
When it comes to accessibility, make sure you consider those with disability. If a visually impaired person visits your site, will they be able to know what to do? If they need the text to be read, so you have a text-reader?
I am colorblind, and I can tell you it is difficult to read some text if it is on a background that clashes with the color of the text. Keep things like this in mind, and remember that when it comes to many aspects of web design, simple is almost always better.
If you want to test the accessibility of your website, here’s a good article for you: Web Accessibility Testing: Make your Website Accessible Now! Published by AccessibilitySpark, this article will help you to understand web accessibility testing and how you can make your website accessible for everyone.
Navigation
Does your navigation cause people to have to go through 6 clicks to get to the page they want? If so, you’ve done it wrong. People don’t like having to dig through multiple pages before getting to where they need to be.
Some easy solutions for this involve using pop up windows or opening a link in a new tab if appropriate. Imagine you were trying to navigate through your site if you were a customer. Would you enjoy the process of clicking 87 times or would your rather the process be streamlined?
Logic
When someone goes to your homepage, will they easily be able to locate the contact information page? Will they know how to read more about your product or service?
One of the most frustrating things is just wanting to find something on a website and not being able to. If your website is not logically organized, people are going to get frustrated. If you are able to logically design and organize your website people will have a far better experience.
Content
One huge pet peeve I have is visiting a website that when I begin reading I can immediately tell that the content is copied from somewhere, or it just bores me.
Your content needs to be original! It needs to come from your knowledge and be described through your expertise. Don’t copy someone else page, which is becoming extremely common, it’s boring and hurts you in the search engine rankings.
Make your content inspired and interesting. Write it to gain people’s attention and interest. People are not going to give you a long time to convince them to buy, sign up, or follow you. Write excitedly, yet precisely. Write in detail, but with few words.
Conclusion
Your website needs to look the part in order to have people stay on your page. It needs to be user-friendly with easy navigation. Design with the user in mind, even if that means looking past your own preferences. It doesn’t matter how much you like it if no one visits your site. On the flip side, a well-designed website can be the catalyst to your success. The digital age is wild, but a great website will give you a solid foundation to build on and to find success.