LookinLA | Top Five Best Practices for Modern Web Design

Your customer meets your brand in only a number of ways. One of the most common ways today is by visiting your website. With that, it’s essential your website provide a stellar first impression. 

I know what you’re thinking – how does a website make an impression? It’s purely functional, right? Wrong. In the world we live in, a website is so much more than a collection of information for a customer to peruse. It’s an interactive experience. Visitors shop, watch and listen. They expect to feel engaged and captivated.

A tall order for a small business, right? It doesn’t have to be. The first step to a high performing website is a great website design. Not an “out of the box” design. A website design product of time, dedication, and a bit of spark.

Not to worry, we broke it down for you. Here are the five elements required for a flawless website design:

Incorporate your brand

Use your website to announce your brand to the world. Tell the world who you are, who your company is, what your company stands for, and what your company cares about. Visitors need to see and feel your identity. This creates feelings of camaraderie, which builds loyalty. Not to mention, having a distinct, tangible brand distinguishes you from competitors.

Use intuitive navigation directions

What good is your website design if visitors can’t find what they’re looking for? The direction is a job your navigation must nail. It should be simple, clear, and directive. If a visitor stops to think about what to click next, they’ll end up exiting your site. There are a few ways to create an intuitive navigation. First, place your main navigation at the top of your page. Second, ensure labels are consistent on every page of your website. Third, place a search box at the top so visitors can search by keyword. Last, don’t overwhelm visitors with too many navigation options.

Easy usability, fast speeds

Your website design should be usable by the average user. You can’t expect everyone to be an HTML coder. This means using interface designs familiar to a common audience. You also want to make sure your loading speeds are fast. Slow loading speeds could be the end of your website. According to Google, 53% of visits are abandoned if a mobile site takes more than three seconds to load. Every second more is money lost to you.

Responsive design

If you don’t have a mobile responsive website, turns out 48% of all users believe you don’t care. Visitors expect a website to work on any one of their devices. Our lives are on-the-go, and a potential customer could need to pull up your website anywhere. The only way to keep up with the competition is to have a mobile responsive web design.

Create engaging content

As mentioned before, when visitors come to your website they expect an experience. They won’t stick around unless your content is compelling. It needs to appeal to your target market while using a mix of media (written word, photos, video, etc.) This is to engage the audience. To attract an audience your content needs to be SEO optimized. This means identifying how your audience searching for your products and crafting unique, authoritative content that is built for search engines and your human customers. A balance should exist between quality, original content, and SEO.

Convinced your website design needs an upgrade? Need to create a website? Don’t know where to start? The first step: contact LookinLA. We’re well-versed in creative, functional website design. Let us design you a website that will engage and attract your target market and put more money in your pocket. Feel free to reach out to us. We’d love to help you grow your business on the web.