8 Simple Website Design Tips That Everyone Should Know

The layout and design of your website are crucial to keep your audience engaged. Here are a few website design tips that you should follow to help you achieve success.

1 | Provide valuable content

Make sure each page has something to offer your visitors, something that will keep them on your website and will bring them back for subsequent visits. Include a call to action that offers something to your visitors and then captures their name and email so that you can stay in touch with them and notify them about new products or services that you have in the future.

2 | Avoid useless elements

Don’t distract your visitors with things that will take them away from the true purpose of your website, which is ultimately selling them on you and your product. Sound or animation -- unless it is a vital part of the overall design of the site -- is distracting. If you have sound, make sure that visitors can easily turn it off.

3 | Provide easy navigation

Make sure visitors can easily navigate from one page to another and include that navigation on each page. Provide a link to a sitemap so visitors can see all the pages on your site if they are searching for something specific. Include a link to the home page on each page. If you have some longer pages, include a way for users to get back to the top without having to scroll back up.

4 | Make things easy to find

Layout your page so all your vital information is at the top of the page where visitors can see and read it as soon as they open your website. Limit text on the page so visitors don’t have to scroll on and on looking for information. If visitors have to scroll down through too much text, they will lose interest and leave your site.

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5 | Make your content easy to read

Use contrasting colors to make key points stand out. Make the text large enough to read so people aren’t straining their eyes. Increasing line height spacing will make your content easier to read, as well. Light text is hard to read on light colors and dark text is hard to read on dark colors. Dark text on a light background is the easiest for visitors to read.

6 | Define links so they are easy to find

Make links a different color from the rest of your body content so they stand out. Don’t underline text for emphasis as people will mistake it for a hyperlink. Make links descriptive of the page that you are linking to. “Click here” is not a descriptive link.  It only tells the user what to do.  Change it to say “Click to buy this book”… this tells the visitor where the link is going to direct them to. Have internal links open in the same window and external links open in a new window so people aren’t redirected off your site.

7 | Let people know how to contact you

Include a link on each page so people can contact you. The link can either be a direct link to your email address or it can be a link to a contact page with a form on your website.

8 | Maintain your website

Review your website periodically for broken links, images that aren’t showing up and other anomalies.

Still not sure what to do with your site?  Contact me to see how I can help you design and maintain your website.