Startup companies need to establish an online presence as quickly as possible because it adds credibility to their business. A website is usually what creates the first impression of your business. This post will look at several web design tips and tricks that you can use to improve your credibility.
Customers will judge a company within seconds of the first interaction and so you need to use these precious seconds to make a positive impression.
An eye-catching visual on your homepage is how you hook an audience. This sets the tone for what’s to come. So you need to make sure that you have something that visually represents something valuable to your target market. A few examples include:
A website must also have an easily identifiable logo so that your target market can associate it with your brand. Having a logo in the top-left or top-center makes it the visual center of attention for visitors.
One of the most crucial web design tips and tricks is that having a well-designed website makes your business visible to search engines. Make the most of this opportunity. One such design company that fully understands this is Artwork Abode who is known to offer good artwork services at affordable prices. If you are not experienced in search engine optimization, then you should partner with a web design agency that understands the ins and outs of SEO.
Here are the seven essential tips that you must follow if you want to convert your audience as a startup company.
The ‘back’ button is the most widely used button on a website, and so you need to make sure that your company’s homepage makes a great first impression. Don’t allow them to hit that popular button. You only have five seconds to hook a visitor! Use compelling images to compel the visitor to stay and see what your business has to offer. A popular expression for entrepreneurs is to “hit while the iron is hot.” So the first, and perhaps most important of our web design tips and tricks is to hook your audience within five seconds. When incorporating the rest of these tips into web design, always keep that in mind.
Remember the 5-second rule? Well if your page has not loaded in those five seconds, then visitors will hit the back button. One of the biggest reasons why a homepage loads slowly is that it’s “heavy.” It is bogged down with trash that does not belong, so try making it lighter to reduce long load times.
Get rid of any images that are not relevant to the message on the homepage. If it doesn’t add value, then move it to another page. You should also split large pages into smaller, more focused pages. This not only caters to load times but to the short attention span of web browsers.
Navigation is something that needs to be at the top of your list of concerns. A company website should be so simple that anyone can navigate it. Most websites use stationary menus since they are so user-friendly. This ensures that all essential navigation items are easily accessible from any page on the site. If you confuse a visitor with overly-complicated menus, then they are probably going to leave.
The next item on our list of web design tips and tricks is to keep the website as simple and clean as possible. All information that is vital to your business should be displayed. Make users comfortable by keeping a clean design. Remove images that are not vital. As stated earlier, if you have pages that are long, then consider breaking them down into smaller pages. In fact, we see a lot of bloggers breaking down their large blog posts into separate pages and then having a clickable table of contents. This ensures that their blog post doesn’t look cluttered.
People love to browse the internet from their phones so it’s essential that a startup business make their website mobile friendly. A mistake that many startups repeatedly make is that their website looks fantastic on a computer, but that same website will look like trash on a mobile. Make sure that to use a responsive design for your website so that it works flawlessly on both computer and mobile devices.
A website is used as part of an overall marketing plan and so each page must include a call to action. For example, placing a “Download Now” button to the side of a blog post promoting a free report is a good call to action. Ending the blog post with a message that encourages readers to download that report is even better. Most business websites do not include a clear call to action, and so you can gain a competitive advantage with this one simple trick.
Your website design must be planned around an overall marketing strategy. The main goal is to communicate a specific overall message to your target market. Most startup businesses throw together a bunch of text, add a fancy image, and then go live. You need to take it a step further. Putting together a clear online marketing plan and following through with it will make your website convert at a much higher rate. Here are some elements that you need to use along with your website to promote your startup business:
Those are just the essentials, but you should add as many as possible.
Following these useful and practical website design tips and tricks will boost the conversion rate of your startup website. This is going to be the foundation for all of your digital marketing. Make a great impression by posting a user-friendly and valuable website.
Erica is a professional content writer who contributed this guest post to our SEO Academy.
