At Paperkite, we believe that a website is your virtual welcome mat. The first impression that potential customers will have of your business or organization is made online. Whether you’re creating your website for the first time or are looking to make some updates, the process can be overwhelming. We’ve outlined a few key pieces of advice to help you on your journey to developing a website that will not only showcase your business but boost your sales.
Plan Ahead
The most important step in website development is planning it out beforehand. We recommend scouring the internet for website inspiration. Look for color schemes, formatting styles, design elements, or interactive features that you like and would work well for your website. Once you have your inspiration, start mood boarding! Organize your ideas into a visual representation of what you want your website to look AND feel like. This step will help you later on as a creative guide towards your end goal.
Think About The Customer Journey
Proper organization is essential to a quality website. When customers visit your website, you want to provide a friction-free experience in which they can quickly and easily find the information they’re looking for. One way to do this is by having clear descriptive headlines, most likely at the top of the page. UX design is a skill, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to do on your own. When organizing your website, a good question to keep in mind is, “If I were a customer visiting this website for the first time, where would I look for x, y, and z.”
You should also consider what device the customer will be using to view your website: desktop or mobile phone. The view will be slightly different for each device, so when formatting your page, ensure information is optimized so it is as accessible from a cell phone as it is a desktop.
Simplify Your Visual Elements
Our biggest piece of advice when it comes to website visuals is to keep it simple! Clean, modern designs are in right now, but even if modern isn’t your style, a simple, streamlined website design should always be the goal. Thinking back to user experience, when customers visit your website they don’t want to be overwhelmed. Pop-ups, animations, and moving elements can add excitement to your page, but they can also be distractions, so use them sparingly and only when they serve a purpose. The same idea applies to color schemes as well. Color and contrast are amazing tools for branding, but too many bright or contrasting colors can do more harm than good in terms of visual appeal (not to mention site readability), so keep those to a minimum as well.
Add Calls To Action
Now that people are on your page, what do you want them to do? Adding, and emphasizing, a call to action like “learn more,” “schedule an appointment,” or “sign up” can be just the motivation your customers need to take that next step. Whatever your goal is, whether you’re trying to sell products, garner volunteers, collect donations, or simply raise awareness about your company, encourage your audience to interact with the website through a clickable call to action.
Prove Yourself
This one is more simple than it sounds. Prove you’re an established company by adding links to your social media pages. Nowadays, people look up a business’s social media pages almost as much as they look up their website when seeking information. Social media serves as an extension of your website, adding another layer of visuals and allowing your customers to gather information about your business that may not have been included on your website.
When it comes to building your website there are numerous factors to consider and decisions to make, but keeping these five tips in mind will set you on the right path to creating an effective website. At Paperkite, we have experience in web development and know just how to design an innovative, eye-catching, and easy-to-use website that can help convert your audience into customers. Let’s talk about how we can take your website to the next level.
