Never forget that your website is the public face of your business or company, and that first impressions count. Just as you wouldn’t dream of going to an important business meeting in paint-splattered jeans or a frayed jumper, your website shouldn’t look as though it was knocked together by a first-year web design student with zero experience.
It’s not for you!
Far too many business owners make the mistake of creating a website that they like the look of, without assessing the impact it will have on customers old, new and prospective. You may love the colours pink and purple, or perhaps you prefer a stark monochrome look, but it’s important to remember that your own preferences do not necessarily represent those of your website visitors.
Are you Expressing your Message Effectively?
An article in Creative Bloq, suggests ensuring that every aspect of every page on your site should serve to emphasise your business or product through a cohesive design strategy. It’s important to make sure that your message is consistent, so that links are all expressed in the same way, for example. And a particularly important point that is far too often overlooked is that your contact details need to be prominently placed on every page of your site. Nothing is more frustrating for your customers than searching for the information that they require.
Does Your Site Employ Annoying Tactics?
The back button on a browser is an important tool that we all use regularly to find our way back to our starting point, or to return to a page of particular interest. Yet as Entrepreneur points out, far too many sites employ an annoying little trick which deactivates the back button, forcing visitors to stay on the current page. Another bad practice is to force links to open in a new window, rather than a new tab. Don’t usurp your visitors’ commands over their own computers or smartphones, or you risk alienating them.
Don’t Cut Corners
You may have studied a little web design, or even taught yourself. And with a wealth of helpful sites offering templates for you to tweak to suit your own circumstances it can be all too easy to assume that creating a website is a simple matter of dragging and dropping some pictures and text onto a screen. But as in most things in life, you get what you pay for. When your website is there to attract visitors, convert visits into sales and generate profit then attempting to do it ‘on the cheap’ can be a false economy.
Don’t assume that you have to spend huge sums of money to get a fully-functioning bespoke website. These days it’s easy to source web design in London and beyond with just a few clicks, so scout around for a company that will really listen to your requirements and build a site that adds value to your business. Some companies such as viziononline.co.uk can even tailor-make a useful app for smartphones, helping to ensure customer loyalty.
Good professional web developers will create a unique site that reflects your business ethos – the website equivalent of wearing a smart suit to a business meeting, ensuring happy faces all round!