To get to that last goal point, your website needs to quickly engage your visitors and deliver the information they want to stay on your site. While 2.6 seconds may not seem very important, these first few moments are crucial to your online business success. First impressions really do count—in fact, they could be the factor that influences your visitors to choose your product or service over your competitors!

So if you’re serious about building a digital business that succeeds, you need a website has all the essential tools to hook audiences the moment they land on your website.

Ready to get started? Keep potential customers from bouncing off your site by following these simple yet powerful design strategies!

1. Choose a Website Design that’s Smart and Speedy

Whether you’re hiring a web designer, using a website building tool, or coding your site from scratch, you’ll want a visually impactful design and a fast loading time.

Templates are a great tool for creating functional, fast-loading websites. While they won’t be as customizable as building a site from scratch, they’ll enable you to get a highly personalized website with great UX at a fraction of the cost. Whether you use a template or have a designer code your site, be sure to choose designs that suit your business or service. Bright colors are suited for a fashion brand or entertainment sites, but not for financial services or legal services. The right design is key.

A lot of online business owners and bloggers fail to realize that speed is an essential component of the web design process. Did you know that currently more than half of all web traffic now comes from mobile? So, having a mobile-friendly site that loads quickly is becoming increasingly important as more and more people are using their handheld devices to shop online.

Google has stated that speed greatly impacts a website’s revenue. Online shoppers want to accomplish their goals more quickly (view a product, check out, etc.) and an optimized page speed solves that dilemma. In fact, online shoppers spend 70% more time on a site that loads quickly.

So in the initial development of your website, be sure to choose a platform, design, and theme that can support optimized design and loading speed you need to make your website run smoothly.

2. Have Clean and Intuitive Website Navigation

Website navigation can make or break your conversions. There’s nothing more frustrating to your customers than arriving at a website and not being able to find what they’re looking for.
A good website design needs to be easy to navigate. It should serve as a map or compass, making it extremely intuitive for first-time visitors to see the main sections. Moreover, people should be able to get to their destination in just a few clicks.

Here are some tips to achieve a clean and intuitive navigation!

Place your menu or navigation in a standard location, such as a hamburger menu or across the top of your page. Remember that your navigation menu should be visible from every page of your website, not just the homepage!

If you have lots of content on your site, consider including a search bar. This allows people to quickly find more hidden content by simply typing certain words or phrases.

3. Consider the size and style of your fonts and call-to-action buttons

Size matters in this mobile age. Think about the quality of your customers’ experiences when viewing your website using their smartphones with one eye, one hand, and at arm’s length. Will they be able to read your text and click on your “buy” or “sign-up” button without zooming in?

Remember that even the smallest tweaks in your website design can spell the difference between a good and a bad user experience. For your fonts, avoid using a size smaller than 16 pixels because they become harder to read.

Also, keep your typefaces as simple as possible. A lot of web designers use sans serif fonts because they go easy on the eyes.

Make sure that your call-to-action buttons are highly visible. In addition to choosing a larger size to suit customers who are tapping instead of clicking, pick a color that contrasts nicely with your background color. For example, a blue background goes well with an orange button.

Images are also an important aspect of your website design. Avoid using images that are low-quality or simply irrelevant. Stock images are great if you can’t afford a photographer, but be careful to choose one’s that look genuine and authentically represent your business.

In summary––your site needs to be planned well with your customers in mind. Think about the appropriate images as well as the font sizes and colors that will help them accomplish what they want!

There you have it, our three tips for designing a stellar website that makes a great first impression. Ready to get started on yours? Contact us to find out more about how we can help!