5 Factors To Consider When Designing Your Business Website

When you’re planning to create a website, it can’t be denied that the eagerness to have it up and running might be there. But before your excitement gets the best of you, you first need to put in a lot of hard work. Designing your website means serious business. To be competitive in today’s digital age, a business website is one of your assets. When you don’t have one, you may fall far behind the competition. When you have a poorly designed one, the same effect might still hold. This is where it’s highly necessary to put the effort into designing your business website.

Given its important role today, it’s very important to ensure a well-designed website. Even the smallest web design mistake could be costly, so you’ll want to be more careful and thorough with your website design process.

Read on to know the factors you must consider when designing your business website. 

1. Usability

One of the most important factors to consider when designing a website is usability. This means your website can be used with ease even by the average website user. It’s wrong to assume that every internet user is well-versed with the ins and outs of websites and technology. It’s better to consider a majority of your website visitors as average, so you could use this as a venue to create websites with ease of access. 

With that said, here are insightful tips to help you achieve a user-friendly website:

• Keep the layout simple: This means having a fuss-free design. It’s important, however, to draw the line between a website that’s downright dull and one that’s simple yet sparks interest and holds the essentials. A clean and simple layout makes it easier for your website visitors to find what they’re looking for and navigate through your website.
• Use whitespace generously: It refers to that space on your website left blank or white. This isn’t wasted space, rather, it’s an important design element to factor in for good usability. When your website visitors’ eyes are tired from going through tons of photos and text, the whitespace gives those eyes a place to ‘rest’.
• Use easy-to-read and attractive fonts: A website should have an appealing theme, layout, and high-quality content. Although, all of these will be futile if your text isn’t easy to read. It’s therefore important to have attractive and readable fonts. Choosing the right font is an important facet to achieve usability. This will also assure your website’s text is easy to read through.  

If you’re uncertain if you can ace website usability all on your own, you can always rely on many available website designers to help you.  You may click here and visit other sites to start your search.

2. Content

Website content is another important factor to consider when it comes to website design.  Despite how digital marketing trends come and go, good content will always be there to stay. If you don’t get this right, your website might simply not rank well compared to other sites.

Successful website content appeals to both search engines and your target market. This can be achieved through strategies like:

• Write original content all the time: The topic may be the same or similar to other websites within your niche. Although, it must also provide something new and different. Don’t even attempt to plagiarize because you’ll only hurt your website rankings and reputation when you do so.
• Keep the text simple: Avoid using overly technical terms not many people may understand. The simpler your chosen words are, the better. This can help widen your content’s reach.  Also, many users will understand, appreciate, and grasp the message you’re trying to convey.
• Avoid overselling your products or services: Many websites may be posting content for marketing purposes.  You should also be able to adjust what you post to the effect that it won’t sound overly promotional. When your content is too promotional, your readers may easily be turned off by it.

3. Search Engine Optimization 

A well-designed website is also one that’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO) compliant. It refers to all the standards and techniques websites have to abide by to rank well with search engines. Given the fast-paced world of technological advancement, it’s very important to keep up. This means that should there be any changes with SEO standards in place, you’re also versatile enough to apply the same to your website.

In this section, you’ll come across these tips to design an SEO friendly website:

• Incorporate the right keywords on your website’s content: When you create good content, you’re driving good traffic to your site. This also increases customer engagement on your website. The higher your customer engagement becomes, the more effective your website is with reaching its marketing goals.
• Pay close attention to readability: When your website’s design and content are highly readable, you can keep your website visitors for a longer time. This ensures your audience can gather all the information they’re looking for on your site along with the products and services they wish to purchase.
• Make your website compatible with all devices: The advancements in technology also gave birth to smartphones and gadgets with a wide range of capabilities. This means that so much of your website audience can potentially be scrolling from their mobile phones. You should design your website in such a way that the interface doesn’t get distorted when browsing from a mobile phone. If not, you’ll lose potential visitors when they’re dismayed because of your website.

4. Speed

Page loading speed is another very important factor to consider when designing a website. A website’s loading speed could make or break your website. All your graphics, content, media, and design elements will be irrelevant if it negatively affects your page loading speed.

In today’s fast-paced world, even users browsing on the internet want to have instant results. Often, you may only have a few seconds to keep the user waiting. Once they feel your page is too slow, they’ll automatically close it.  Thus, they may favor a competing website that loads faster. Right there and then, your business has lost a potential customer all because of the page’s slow loading speed. Moreover, it will be harder to convince those disappointed customers to come back to your website when you’ve already made a bad first impression.

If you think your page loading speed could use a little work, here are some tips to improve:

• Optimize media size: Your photos and videos play a crucial role in making your website rank better with search engines. Although, there are instances when your media size might be too much or too heavy. Or, you’re posting too many photos and videos.

Unfortunately, when the latter situation holds, your page loading speed suffers. Optimize your images such that they’re only the needed size. But, be sure to not shrink your media at the expense of quality. A well-dedicated media or graphics team can help you with this.

• Choose the right hosting options: For your website to function as it is, it needs to have a server host. If you’re new in the e-commerce industry and on a tight budget, it’s understandable to opt for the cheapest hosting options. However, this may not necessarily be what’s best for your website. It’s important to strike a balance with a reasonable price for your server and one that also delivers results.

Choosing the right host or server depends on your website’s needs. This is a choice that’s also best determined by your web design agency or programming team.  Don’t be frugal on this.  Go for as much as you can afford which also offers top-quality results.  Otherwise, your website might have high traffic and busy network searches.  This might also slow the loading speed of your page.

5. Aesthetics

All other factors considered, also remember to think of the aesthetics. Your website has to be beautiful and presentable enough to lure website visitors in. Surely, no internet user wants to spend their time on a website that’s too technical and lacks any visual appeal.

Website design aesthetics also play a higher role in making your website stand out. It’s also about giving your user’s a pleasant experience on your site. You can think of your website as if it was your physical store. Customers are usually satisfied with how you arrange your display shelves. This might mean a higher chance for those customers to leave with a purchase.

Conclusion

The key to designing an effective website is to ensure a perfect balance of all of the factors enumerated above. Remember that in today’s digital day and age, a business website is one of the most important assets you can ever own. Without it, your business might not translate to results. It takes a lot of work to design the right website. If you’re unsure how to go about it, the factors mentioned above should help you start designing your website.