Although many people become impatient when they access a poorly designed, slow-functioning website, they may not know how to avoid creating a problematic site. We all get annoyed when we visit a site that is slow-loading and difficult to navigate. In most instances, we exit an ill-functioning site soon after accessing it and search for a similar, competing domain with quality web design and functionality.
Approximately 46 to 48 percent of Internet users today think that website design is the primary factor that determines the visibility and credibility of an online business. Yet they may not know the basics of create a dynamic, top-quality site design that ensures optimal e-commerce success. If you own an online business and strive to promote your products via your company site, gaining valuable knowledge and insight about optimal web design will do wonders to boost your site visitor counts, customer base and sales conversion rates.
Essential Web Design Tips for Reaching Greater Levels of Business Success
Major web design practices and tips for attaining higher levels of success for your business include the following:
1. Consistent Branding and Effective CTAs. Especially in web design for B2C and B2B sites, it is essential to ensure consistent branding across all pages of a site. By repeating the same logo and color scheme throughout your website as well as consistent textual content, media, iconography and animation, you can make your brand’s visual presentation and story obvious to your regular customers and to anyone who visits your website. Effective calls to action (CTAs) in site content are also vital for gaining new customer leads and increasing your website’s conversion rates.
2. Fast Loading Time and Easy Navigation. All of your website content should load quickly and effectively. Web design experts report that just one second of additional page loading time required for viewing your website can reduce sales by as much as 27 percent. Even with the size of an average site increasing significantly, web analysts advise that normal customer expectancy for site loading speed will soon move up from three to two seconds. Already, upwards of 40 percent of website visitors will exit a site if it requires three seconds or more to load.
To enable your site to load faster, you can make use of a content delivery network (CDN), which delivers a site’s static files like CSS, JavaScript and images using servers that are in close proximity to a site user’s physical locale. The site will then load more rapidly for this user. Also, by initiating new image formats on your website, you can reduce the size of the images that appear on your site to speed up your web content loading time. You can also optimise your site content for compression when you use consistent HTML and CSS code.
3. Responsive Site Design and Social Media Icons. To ensure greater web traffic volumes for your site, you need responsive website design. This will make all of the features and functions of your site easily accessible across all types of digital devices—desktop computers, laptops, tablets and smartphones. By including social media icons in your web content, your business site and its products and services will be more widely shared and showcased across social media websites for an increased client base, greater conversion rates and enhanced business success.