A website is one of the most important parts of any business. It’s the first thing potential customers will look at when they’re considering doing business with you, and it can be a make-or-break factor in their decision to buy from you or contact you.
A well-designed website will help you attract more visitors and convert them into customers. It should be designed with your target audience in mind and updated regularly with fresh content to keep people coming back.
Keep reading for tips on designing a website that can help bring your business a positive return on investment.
Whether you’re starting a new website or revamping an existing one, there are things you need to keep in mind if you want to create a website that drives revenue.
If you are hiring an agency to build your website, make sure you follow these tips during the RFP (Request for Proposal) process to receive a quality proposal and go through the checklist on how to write your brand RFP.
1. Start with a strong foundation
Before you even start designing your website, it’s important to have a solid foundation in place. This means clearly understanding your goals, target audience, and branding. Once you understand why you’re building or redesigning your website, you can begin writing your website content.
At this stage, you should also choose your website CMS (content management system). The most popular platform for web design and development is WordPress, which we use for most of our clients at Consensus Creative web design agency.
62% of the top 100 fastest growing companies in the US (Inc. 5000) use WordPress.
https://techjury.net/blog/percentage-of-wordpress-websites/
WordPress is a flexible platform that is easy to use and manage. It also has in-built SEO features plugins that make it easier for you to rank your website on Google.
2. Use clear and concise content (i.e. “website copy”)
Your website content should be clear, concise, and easy to understand. Avoid using jargon or technical terms that might not be familiar to your audience. Instead, focus on writing copy that is simple and straightforward. Use the AIDA formula to help you write your content for each page.
AIDA stands for:
- Attention
- Interest
- Desire
- Action
Break down each page into these 4 sections in a Google Doc and start filling them out. This will ensure your content hooks your audience and has them take the next step (purchasing your product, contacting you, etc.).
Watch this video to learn more about the AIDA formula:
3. Make sure your website is responsive
In today’s world, your website must be responsive, meaning it looks good and functions properly on all devices. With over half of the population accessing the internet from their phones and tablets, it’s important that your website can be easily viewed on smaller screens. At Consensus Creative, we ensure that all of your pages work well on all device screen sizes.
4. Use high-quality, optimized images and videos
Website visitors don’t want to read a Wikipedia article when visiting your website. Most people skim through pages to find the info that they need. This is why breaking down your written content using other forms of media (high-quality images and videos) is important. Adding relevant photos and videos can help tell your brand’s story and give visitors a better sense of what you do.
Ensure that you optimize your images and embedded video files, as without proper optimization your website will load slowly and cause your visitors to leave. The best way to do this is using a plugin, such as Imagify, ShortPixel and WPRocket.
5. Organize your content in an easy-to-navigate way
No one wants to visit a website that is difficult to navigate. Make sure your content is organized in a simple way so that your audience can find what they’re looking for without clicking through multiple sub-menus or having to dig through walls of text. Use clear and concise headings and subheadings to help manage your content and ensure that visitors can easily scan through it without having to read every single sentence.
6. Include a call to action
Your website should have a clear call-to-action (or “CTA”) that tells visitors what you want them to do. Whether you want them to sign up for your newsletter, make a purchase or fill out your inquiry form, your CTA should be easy to spot and understand. Your CTA button has to stand out from the rest of the website, which can be achieved by making your CTA button a different colour and increasing its text size.
Here are some more tips to optimize your CTAs from our friends at WordStream.
7. Optimize your website for search engines
Optimizing your website for Google is important if you want people to find your website. This means using relevant keywords throughout your site and making sure your site is easily crawlable by search engine bots, which scan your website and decide on where you will rank in the search results.
At Consensus Creative, we use RankMath to optimize our clients’ websites for SEO, as well as help our clients with on-page optimization, backlink acquisition, and more. Contact us if you want to boost your website in Google search results.
8. Make sure your website is secure
In today’s world, website security is more important than ever. You need to ensure your website is secure if you’re collecting sensitive information from visitors, like credit card numbers or addresses. This means installing an SSL certificate, using a security/CDN provider such as Cloudflare, and using 2-factor authentication on your website.
9. Test your website before launch
Before you launch your website to the public, it’s important to perform multiple tests to ensure your website will work properly. This includes testing all the links on your site, the contact forms, your website’s speed, the checkout/payment process, etc. Without a proper quality assurance process, your website is bound to have some issues which you might not know about.
10. Launch your website and promote it
Once you’ve designed and tested your website, it’s time to launch it! Make sure to promote your website through marketing channels like social media or send an email to your newsletter subscribers.
Building a perfect website takes time and effort, but following these essential tips will help you create a successful site that helps you build up your brand image and increase your revenue.
Final Thoughts
By following best practices for website design and development and continuously making improvements based on user feedback and A/B tests, you can ensure that your website brings in traffic and converts them into clients.
We are a Toronto, Canada based, award-winning agency that can help you with your website design, web development and SEO. We have dozens of 5-star reviews from Clutch, Upcity, DesignRush and GoodFirms.
If you need help building a website from scratch or redesigning your existing site, contact us using the form below and we will be happy to jump on a call and discuss your website.
