First impressions are important, and making your website appear professional has a profound impact on how consumers view your brand. In this digital age, your website often gives potential clients their first impression of you or your business. Every element of web design has an impact on the viewer, and certain design choices inherently appear more professional to the eye than others. Certain design elements subconsciously tell a reader they are dealing with a knowledgeable, trustworthy, and high-quality company.
Keep It Simple
Simplicity always wins the game. Many people are afraid their website looks too boring and may overcompensate by crowding the site with a lot of images, moving text, pop-up boxes, crazy fonts, or too many colors. Aside from making your page appear chaotic and busy, having too many complicated features may also slow down your loading times.
Choose the Right Font
The font you choose can set the tone for your entire website. It’s important to choose a font that is clear and easy to read. As a rule, avoid using comic sans or any other font made to mimic people’s handwriting. Generally, sans serif fonts are considered the easiest to read and look best on a screen. Generally, stick to just 1-3 different fonts for your entire website. This will help your site to look more uniform and consistent.
Use High-Quality Images
Using large, high-quality images can make your website look more dynamic and professional. Instead of crowding your website with a lot of small photos that are difficult to see and take a long time to load, select a few high-resolution images and display them prominently. If you can, avoid using stock images. If your budget allows, use photos taken by a professional photographer that highlight certain elements of your business.
Create Well-Written Content
Nothing makes your website appear more professional than having excellently written content. Readers will appreciate reading detailed, informative copy that is free of typos and grammatical errors. When writing your website content, be thorough but precise. Google released a few recent algorithm updates that impact search engine result pages (SERPS). Since these changes came into play, having slightly lengthier content ranks higher and is preferred by users.
To generate reader-focused content, start by answering questions you think potential clients may have. Try anticipating and addressing their potential needs as thoroughly but concisely as possible. If you are an excellent writer, write the website content yourself, but be sure to review it with a close editorial eye. A second pair of eyes is usually a good idea, as well. Having a friend or a colleague check your work for typos before publishing it can be extremely helpful. If you do not feel confident in your writing skills, you can hire a professional to do the writing for you.
Utilize Section Headings
Breaking up your content into small, digestible chunks is a great way to keep people reading. No one likes reading through a wall of text — this can be overwhelming and visually off-putting to anyone visiting your site. You can make it easier for them to scroll through your content and find exactly what they’re looking for by breaking up content into small sections with clearly labeled section headings. Use a larger font for headings to make them easier to view, and make sure the headings say exactly what topics will be covered in that section.
Mobile Friendly
In this day and age, people use their phones and tablets more than any other type of device. If your website isn’t optimized for mobile, you are missing out on a lot of potential business. Chances are, if your website doesn’t look good or load well on a potential client’s phone or another mobile device, they will move on and look somewhere else for whatever service you are providing. Make sure your site is fully optimized for mobile and has a great-looking mobile version with easy navigation.
Loading Time
A website’s loading time is an important element when it comes to retaining users and keeping them on your site. Generally, people won’t wait around for a page that’s not loading. There are almost always other options out there. Anyone interested in your product or service is likely to navigate away from your page and look somewhere else if your site isn’t loading efficiently or if it’s too hard to find what they’re looking for. You can use Web Dev Tools to view and optimize your site’s loading times.
Easy Navigation
If your website is clear and easy to navigate, you will have a more positive user experience. When setting up your site’s navigation, think like a user. Unlike you, they don’t know what’s supposed to be there or where to look. Keeping the navigation straightforward will keep people on your page and allow them to easily find all the information and pages they are looking for.
Creating a visually appealing, professional-looking website is key to the success of your business. Contact Imagine Monkey today to speak with a web designer about creating an outstanding website capable of highlighting all the unique qualities of your business.