Designing your business’s website is, without a doubt, an exciting venture. More so than crunching numbers or investing your life savings into stock, this represents your first big opportunity to get creative, to put pen to paper (so to speak), and to see what was once nothing more than a grain of an idea come to life before your eyes.
Still, these things always sound simpler in our heads, and it is all too common for us to sit down at the computer, wile away a few hours over typography and colour schemes, and then find that, ultimately, we have no idea where to start or what to do.
Still, you don’t need a degree in art and design to create a bold and eye-catching site – you simply need to work on your understanding of what features spell the difference between bold and blasé, and, of course, why.
So, if you are preparing to build your website – or simply feel that you need to overhaul an existing one – read about the top three design elements every site needs.
1. Cohesive Branding
Your website represents the digital face of your brand. If you run a physical store or office for your business, then you will know that ensuring it puts across the right first impression is about more than keeping it well-organised – it’s about telling a story using every element of design, and ensuring that you are not only welcoming to clients, but memorable.
The story is exactly the same for your website. Users will quickly forget about a dull, bland, lifeless or unoriginal site, which means that it is up to you to make your mark and show what it is you are really about.
Creating a website is about working on a long list of individual elements, but building a successful one means drawing them all together and creating a fluid sense of cohesion that exemplifies the care and passion you lend daily to your business. This is the driving force behind the development of successful website builders like Wix, which offer a wealth of integrated tools – from their online logo maker to their landing page builder – that enable you to work towards one unified final creation.
2. High Quality Images
If you consider the fact that, off-screen, a single picture is worth a thousand words, then a digital image must be worth ten-fold. Why? Well, as we all know, internet users (us included) typically suffer from a shortened attention span. And, while this is great for our productivity, it makes things far more difficult for those trying to make a strong impact with their website.
This is where images play such a decisive role. A bad, low quality, or unoriginal image offers one of the fastest ways to lose visitors, and see a sharp rise to your all-important bounce-rate.
Investing into a bespoke, branded and professional portfolio of images will pay dividends as you draw in more and more organic traffic. In this way, you can explore the full potential of this valuable medium, and learn how to tell your brand’s story and values through photography – rather than spending hours attempting to bend stock images to meet with your will.
3. Responsive Layout
The frequency with which internet users undertake mobile searches has been increasing for many years now – and, as of 2020, it reached an all time high with around 50% of global web traffic stemming from mobile phones.
A responsive website is one that is capable of managing a smooth transition between a computer screen, a smartphone, a tablet – you name it. Without this vital design element, your site could be (for lack of better terms) scrambled, jumbled and muddled across a whopping half of all your visitors’ devices.
Not only does this put forth a poor first impression – and make your business look as though it is stuck in the past – but, in a more practical sense, it drives away prospective customers and clients simply by virtue of the fact that they cannot use your site properly.
Yes, some will simply load up the laptop to make it through the checkout, but it seems fair to say that a large percentage of people will simply give up and look for the next convenient thing instead. It goes without saying that this would be incredibly unfortunate for you and your business, particularly when, with the right website builder, achieving a responsive design could not be simpler.
Final Thoughts
This list is, of course, no where near exhaustive. The most memorable and successful sites boast a wealth of design features that operate in tandem with one another to create a bold, strong and professional face for brands. This does, however, offer an all-important starting point – a few essential milestones for anyone looking to build a site that will prove fruitful and beneficial now, and well into the future.