As the world continues to be more and more digitized, creating a website is critical to the online success of small businesses. Whether you are creating a new website or trying to enhance an existing one, understanding the web design dos and don’ts will ensure that you build a professional and results-focused website. This web design article aims to explain both best practices and frequent blunders so you can create a website that is effective for your business.

The Dos of Web Design

Focus on User Experience (UX)

User experience (UX) is perhaps the most fundamental component of effective web design. A website has great UX if it is easy to use and navigate while being visually attractive on different devices. A website also needs to be clean so that users can quickly and effortlessly access the necessary information that they seek.

One of the main aspects of the user experience (UX) is to ensure mobile accessibility. Given the surge in mobile web traffic, your site must function seamlessly on mobile devices like smartphones and tablets, in addition to desktops. Moreover, loading speed impacts UX, as slow pages raise the likelihood of visitors abandoning the website.

Have a Clean and Professional Design

Making a great first impression is critical, which is why a website’s design is an important aspect of branding. A clean and professional design fosters trust which, in turn, enhances the trustworthiness of your business.

Do not use more than three fonts, and choose brand-related colors. Using a consistent color design in addition to brand colors promotes a polished and cohesive aesthetic.

Focus on Content Quality

Ensuring that your content is written well is of utmost importance because it fuels customer engagement and improves SEO. If your site’s content is relevant and valuable to your audience, they will spend more time on the website, increasing the chances of converting visitors into loyal customers. It is vital to keep your content relevant and to the point. Remember to avoid verbose terminology as well as complex words—there’s beauty in simplicity.

Make Sure Everyone Can Access Your Website

Providing all users with the ability to browse your site is referred to as website accessibility. For individuals with disabilities, web accessibility guarantees that they can navigate, understand, and interact with the various components on the site seamlessly. Choosing the best web hosting for small business can enhance website speed, security, and uptime, all of which contribute to a smoother user experience. Cybernews has analyzed and compared top hosting providers to help small business owners find the most secure and high-performing options.

Alterations such as screener friendliness, high-contrast color scheme, alt text on images, and many more can enable more users to browse through your site.

Include Effective CTAs

Every page on the site should inspire the user to perform a specific task whether it is buying a product, signing up for an account, or booking a consultation. A well-positioned CTA, captures the attention of the user, selling them on the concept motivates them to act which translates to interacting and completing the necessary steps in the sales funnel.

Your CTAs should be unambiguous, straightforward, and prominently displayed. Use actionable phrases such as “Sign Up Now,” “Get Your Free Quote,” or “Learn More.” The enhancements made to site navigation brought about by the tactical placement of particular website CTAs will contribute to attaining business goals and improve overall sales.

The Don’ts of Web Design

Avoid Making the Design Overly Complex

While it is tempting to want to include every imaginable feature or design element, the old adage telling us “less is more” does apply here. A website that uses all or most design features like a multitude of animations, colors, and fonts will often present an unclear multi-layered stacked structure that will inevitably be overcomplicated, distracting and more difficult to navigate.

Excessive clutter might allow users to comprehend the information presented, but the large number of options and visuals will be so overwhelming that they will choose to abandon the site. The amount of ineffective or unusable visual clutter impacts a user’s experience and satisfaction.

Don’t Ignore Mobile Users

One of the most common website errors that is very detrimental for a small business is not being able to access a site through mobile phones. With so many people trying to access sites using mobile phones, your website should be accessible on any type of screen size. A mobile-friendly design guarantees that users are able to access and navigate the website satisfactorily, irrespective of the device or platform that they are using. If mobile users leave without interacting with the content of the page, the bounce rate will increase and negatively affect other metrics, such as conversion rates.

Avoid Over Wording Text

Content is undeniably essential, but having too much of it can place visitors in a challenging and cluttered setting making navigation towards certain features of the website difficult. Especially on smaller devices, long paragraphs can become a huge inconvenience. Rather than confronting visitors with overwhelming amounts of text, trim and remove anything that is deemed unnecessary. Communicate the message using clear and simple terminology, focus on the main points.

Do Not Forget Website Security

Considering a cyber security strategy, having certain measures put in place is just as important as earning a customer’s trust and protecting your business from liabilities. Without the proper measures in place, a website CAN be hacked, leading to sensitive information being leaked, trust being lost, and potential legal troubles down the line. In addition, a website can get hacked if its software, plugins, or themes are unused for a long period of time.

Refrain from Utilizing Low Effort Visuals and Templates

While a visual can be a good way to get the attention from a visitor, visuals that are generic can damage a website’s credibility as well. This can lead to returning visitors marking the site as untrustworthy while reserving the chances of new visitors valuing the site as unprofessional. The goal can be achieved by using images that are of high quality and are aligned with the brand therefore instead of generic images.

Overcomplicating Navigation Should Not be Done

The navigation of a website can greatly assist with the content layout. As many users often abandon a website when the information they look for is not readily available, better navigation can be achieved by rearranging information and also reducing the number of items in the main menu. Each item in a website menu has to be descriptively labeled so that the user knows exactly what content is found in every page.

Don’t Ignore How Fast You Load Your Website

Visitors to your website are very particular about the speed at which your website opens as well as the speed at which different pages load. According to a survey, the probability of bounce back rate increases by 32% as the page loading time takes 1 sec to 3 secs. Slower means-inefficient, usually results in lower sales and higher loss as more users will abandon the site. Enhance your page load speed by improving image compression, minimizing the use of big multimedia files, and better structuring the website files.

Don’t Use Auto-Play Media

Every form of audio or video auto-play will ruin user experience without exception. As auto-play features will annoy most site visitors, the accompanying sounds or videos could prove to be even worse. Allow users to engage, through clear buttons, with various types of media by granting them clear options to play, pause, mute, or change the volume.

In Conclusion

For your small business, an effective website has to be well-designed with good aesthetics, creative content, and great user experience. Following the dos’ prioritize UX, optimize design and layout, modify website for SEO, and these tips will help avoid the don’ts of overcomplicated design, mobile users blocking, security protocol dismissal will help achieve a great website that fulfills business objectives and meets visitors’ needs. Because web design best practices change constantly, improving your webpage should be a continuous undertaking. However, with the right efforts, you can make sure your website becomes a formidable tool for growing your business.