Here at Digital Nachos we work with many individuals and organisations to design and build a website that allows our clients to reach their target market and operative effectively and efficiently.
When designing a website there are many elements to consider and pull together, it is not just about making it look good. It's often a balancing act and getting these elements just right comes with years of experience.
To help you get to grips with the key elements that can make or break your website design then check out our tips below.
No. 1: Ensure the focus is on your target audience
The first and arguably the most important element when designing any website is to ensure that its focus is on your target audience.
As covered in our recent blog post – ‘Know your Audience’ - it's important to know your audience and make sure that when they land on the home page of your website that they see a website that is aimed at them, their requirements, and their style.
The worse thing you can do is try to target everyone with the same look/design, it's simply too difficult to achieve and ends up muddling your message and potentially alienating your target audience.
If you really are targeting everyone then you will need to keep your design as simple as possible and place your emphasis on tracking data from customers to customise what they see when they land on your website. Think Amazon levels of data analysis, which isn’t always possible. That way you can target everyone in a way that suits them.
If you aren’t sure who your target market is then do some research.
- Check out your current customer base and look for common themes.
- Don’t be afraid of conducting a survey for website visitors, current customers and those that you think you want to be targeting.
Combine this research and analyse the research to give you the information that you need.
No. 2: Mobiles!
The next most important element for any website design is how it looks and functions on mobiles.
The use of mobiles over recent years has gone through the roof so it's incredibly important that your website works well and looks good on devices with smaller screen sizes.
On top of this, Google has put a preference on ranking sites that are mobile-friendly higher in their search engine. It’s a simple but key design element that can quite literally dictate how well your website does in search engines.
You can read more about Google’s preference for mobile-friendly sites here with our ‘Mobile-First Indexing by September 2020’ blog post.
No. 3: Portraying Trust
Security is a key factor for all users, knowing that they can...
- Safely and securely use your site.
- Contact you via any contact form on the site without their details being leaked
- Submit their details to any form on site knowing that it's only to be used for the intended purpose.
- To make a purchase using their chosen method of payment with the reassurance that their details are not being illegally stored and that only the authorised amount will be taken from their accounts.
Whilst, in reality, it’s the functions of the site that actually ensure website security, there is a lot that you can portray and reassure within the design of the website.
Elements that help to portray trust include…
- ‘Padlocks’ next to statements about the website being secure and how it is secure
- Use of recognisable system’s logos that you use shown on the site – i.e. Trust Pilot, SagePay, PayPal.
- Showing contact details in a clear and logical manner to make it clear that individuals can contact you and how they can do so. Multiple channels are always best.
- Clear links to social media profiles – and these social media profiles being up to date and functioning
- Use of testimonials throughout the content
Building trust is necessary if you want someone to complete the call to action that you have presented them, whether that is a purchase or whether it’s a contact form submission.
No. 4: The Use of Colour
One of the common faux pas committed by many businesses when designing their website is to say ‘My favourite colour is x, so that’s the colour I want my website’. Sometimes it can work, but most of the time it can hinder.
There is well-known colour psychology, certain colours make people feel certain ways and certain colours are associated with particular industries or services.
For example, health-related websites are often using the colour blue as their primary colour as it is calm, tranquil, compassionate and sincere. Whereas brands that want to promote productivity, growth and freshness will use the colour green – think about Spotify & Starbucks.
When designing your website by all means say what colours you like and dislike, but balance that with what colours are best to portray your business, its product/services, and are going appeal to your target audience.
No. 5: Search Engine Friendliness
The last feature that is key to a great website design is ensuring that it is search engine friendly.
And yes, just as with portraying trust, the actual ability to be search engine friendly will be down to the structure and set-up of the website. But the design its self can hinder or help.
For a website design to be search engine friendly you need to balance a design that has…
- the ability to load quickly
- looks great on mobile
- allows for content and calls to actions to be placed in the right places
But don’t forget about people! Make your website people friendly!
The accessibility of a website is so important and the design of the website plays a huge part in this.
In every target audience, there will be individuals who have a sight impairment, are dyslexic, have dyscalculia or dyspraxia, and so on. Ensuring that you can cater for all will ensure that your website does not stop individuals from being able to navigate and use your website as you want them to.
Your website design plays a key part in ensuring that it's accessible. So check fonts, font sizes, and font colours against background colours and vice versa. Use appropriate imagery within your design to convey what you want to say and don’t forget about leaving spaces in your design for videos.
You can read more about accessibility with the following blogs.
To help get your website design absolutely spot on, speak to the team here at Nachos. We can guide you so you get the best website design for your business and its audience.
Once you have the design sorted, we can build it for you on your platform of choice and even help you market it. Whatever you need to get your business where it wants to be, we can assist, simply contact us today.
Published: 29th Jun 2021