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Website Design Tips: Do It Like The Pros

The Tennessee Marketing Agency • September 10, 2024

What goes into designing a well-flowing website? We are here to give you the best insider tips & mistakes to avoid!


Picture this: You’re starting your own business. You want to build the website yourself because you don’t want to fork out the funds to have one built for you upfront, or maybe you’re just eager to learn how to design a website. You think putting something out there is better than nothing, so you scour the internet in search of an online web builder and get to work.


BUT...


What if there’s a better way? What if there were a guide with all the pro tips for website building that you could refer to in order to help get your business off the ground?



Well... Hello! Here it is, a curated guide just for you!


In this all-inclusive guide, we’ll share our best tips for website design. Let’s waste no more time and dive right in!




  • Visual Hierarchy: This entails putting things in order from most important to less important, and adding emphasis to the things that you want your viewer to see. Most people, including yourself more than likely, just skim across a website VS reading each thing. Our eyes tend to look for the headlines, the images, things that catch our attention, and quick reads to get the information they seek. Some examples of this are:


Text & Content Measurements: To make top assets more noticeable, enlarge things like business names and logos. Naturally, readers are drawn to huge, strong headlines first, followed by shorter text paragraphs.


Element Position: The visitor's attention is drawn by a well-designed website layout. For instance, you might put a logo in the header or a call to action button in the middle of the screen. This allows them to notice and become familiar with your brand, and also sends a message subconsciously to them to reach out to by creating a call to action (a contact form, call button, send message now, etc.)


By creating a distinct hierarchy of your website content, you force readers to subconsciously follow the trail of breadcrumbs you lay out. Applying color, contrast, and spacing after that will help it stand out even more.


Be mindful of what draws their attention the most, and place each item on your site deliberately and with intention.


  • Website Readability: This one flows with the above section. You want to make sure that your website flows beautifully and people do not find it to be too overstimulating, or unreadable. Some ways to ensure you hit this target are:


Blank Space: It is very hard to overestimate the power of blank space on a web design. Any professional web designer will make sure to incorporate blank space through out your/their website, as it is just as important as the graphics. Having the blank space increases readability, by reducing cognitive over stimulation for the reader. Helping your website flow beautifully, and keep people viewing it. It also makes the things you actually want them to be reading, pop even more!


Enlarged Font: Reading tiny text on a screen is no fun, and a sure way to leave your website with more to be desired. Aim for large font headers, and paragraph text that is reasonably enlarged in contrast of the header, or bold.  In web design, it's a general rule of thumb that paragraph/body text should be at least 16 points in size.


Contrast Is Vital: For reading and website accessibility, a proper contrast between the color of the text and the backdrop is essential. Although the color scheme of your website may reflect the colors of your business, make sure there is adequate contrast between the various sections. Use a website tool like Contrast Checker to do this.


Fonts: The world of typography is filled with many fonts. There are two types of typefaces available: sans serif, which literally means "no serifs," and serif fonts, like Times New Roman, which include tiny, projecting lines at the ends of the letters.


Sans Serif VS Serif Fonts: Sans Serif are fonts that are straight lines, no decorative detail such as "Poppins" font. Serif fonts, have decorative tails or 'feet' such as "Times New Roman". Long reads, like the one you are currently reading, work best with sans serif fonts. They are easier to read in lengthy writing. Use no more than three typefaces on a single website, and keep the number of fonts to a minimum. More complex font combinations could be necessary for some projects, but typically using too many fonts will make your brand identity less clear and crowded.


  • Make Sure Your Website Is Easy To Use: Users should have no trouble finding the information they need. A website with good navigation may also significantly enhance the user experience while assisting search engines in indexing your content.


Connect your Homepage to your Logo: Visitors to the website expect this famous technique, which also helps them save time surfing your site. We strongly advise designing your own logo as part of your branding, if you don't already have one.


Keep an eye on your Menu: Your website's menu should be appealing and simple to navigate, regardless of whether you go for a traditional horizontal list, a drop-down menu, or another style of menu.


Scrolling VS Clicking: When designing the layout of your website, think about how the user wants to navigate it. Most people prefer to scroll rather than click to read the information. Having a long Home Page that displays a lot of the information they are looking for, can be a good way to keep your viewers happy. In a case study, scrolling VS clicking increased the customer conversion rate by 30%!


Navigation: Ensure that your website is easy to navigate by putting the Pages in an order of importance to your client, and you. For example, on our homepage menu, we have; Home - About - Services - Blog - Contact. We put thought into the order that we put each category in. When most people view a website, they like to see what the 'About' says. Your message here can really be important to some people and allows them to know what it is you stand for, do, etc. Next, we put 'Services' because that will be what some people immediately click and that is obviously a vital part of our business. Then 'Blog', then 'Contact' last because on every page of our site we put options to allow viewers to contact us.


Infographics: These are undeniably helpful as they catch the eye and make reading the information you want to share on your website, exponentially easier for the viewer. Instead of having paragraph after paragraph, adding an infographic element would make viewing your website more fun for your potential clients. An effective infographic delivers data and analysis in a way that helps your audience digest and understand information easily in a visually pleasing format.


  • Make Sure Your Site Is Mobile-Friendly: Over 90% of website views come from mobile devices, meaning that the importance of making sure your website is mobile-friendly is undeniable. Think about the website's mobile version from the perspective of the viewer. Test each page, any action they can take or click on, and buttons. The mobile version of the website should be more tidy and well-organized. So consider shrinking some assets, such as menus, and reducing components of the page.


  • Prioritize Site Speed Above All Else: The importance of speed in web design is crucial. This can set you apart instantly by having a fast moving website. According to research, it affects every aspect of business. This includes; bounce rate, user happiness, conversions, and income. Visitors will leave your website quickly if it is too slow or simply not downloading items as it should. Period. Because people care, search engines do too, and they include page load speed in their results. Making your website as quick as possible is essential.


  • Brand Awareness: You want to create brand awareness throughout your website. Meaning, you want it all to be cohesive and every part of the website to feel as though it interconnects. For example, on our website we wouldn't want a neon yellow page with black font, because it would be confusing to viewers, and would not align with our designs throughout.


Add Social Buttons: Adding an icon for social sites and linking your Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, X, etc. allows more attention to be drawn to your brand and who you are as a business. It is no surprise how important social media presence can be, as almost everyone today scrolls through and interacts on these sites.


Add Social Sharing: If you have a Blog, which I highly recommend that you do, make sure your website blog posts are shareable to social media with the click of a button. When someone finds your post very informative and helpful, make sure they are easily able to share it. This can really increase brand awareness by reaching many audiences!


LOGO: This is such an important aspect and can really help or hurt your business. You want to create a logo that speaks to you, AND to your customers. You want it to be easy for them to know what your business is about, just by looking at it. You can use any icon or create any design you want, just make sure that if your business is not represented in the design itself that what you do is written somewhere and readable. You want them to be able to quickly look at your logo and get the gist of your services!


Color Contrasting: There is a reason most things are written on white paper with black print; simple to read. While it is good and encouraged to experiment with colors that represent your brand, you want to make sure that they are colors that contrast each other very well. You do not want to choose colors that cause strain on the users eyes, as this could lead to them not wanting to continue reading and ultimately leave your website without using your services. There are websites where you can test colors contrast and create color palettes, such as Coolors.com.


**PRO TIP: Research Color Psychology. This can truly change the game and allow you to convey the message you want to on a subconscious level.


  • Include Reviews On Your Website:  One of the most proven ways to improve brand trust is to include authentic, unvarnished reviews on your website. A whopping 90% of consumers look at reviews before deciding to make a purchase!


Google Reviews: You can link your Google Reviews to your website, or allow customers to email you their reviews and add them to your website manually.



And last but definitely not least..



  • Content To Get You Ranking: First, the amount of words you have on each page truly do matter, and so does the relevancy of those words to your business. Google wants to see that the words on each page, actually have to do with what your business claims to focus on. Taxonomy pages should be 250 or more words, regular posts and pages should be 300 or more, cornerstone content pages (such as service pages, pages vital to what you do) should land north of 900 words, and product pages require a mere 200+ words.


Backlinks & Citations: Try to get your business website link on as many pages of the internet that are relevant to your line of work, as possible. Such as an electrician organization website (if that is what your business does), your local chamber of commerce, online directories (Angies List, Yelp, etc.). You do not want just any website linking to your website, as this can actually hurt your web health if they are not quality backlinks. Now this is just a brief description, but backlink building is very extensive and can get quite tricky. It never hurts to seek professional advice on topics like this. Most marketing agencies should be willing to give you a little guidance!



**Mistakes To Avoid


Using Stock Photos: While using stock photos is absolutely fine and many web designers do use them, you need to avoid using stock images of people. Images with people on websites can actually increase the appeal your website has to a consumer, but recognized stock images of people can do quite the opposite. When viewers recognize the faces from stock images, it hurts your credibility and their trust within your business.


Overcrowding: Overcrowding your web pages can really hurt your conversion rate (the number of people viewing your website that become customers vs the ones that do not). Clutter usually does not bring comfort or trust. We touched on this quite a bit above!


Disruptive Pop-Ups: Having a single pop up on entry offering a discount code, or something of value to the viewer can be a nice touch. BUT when a user is scrolling your website and that gets disrupted by pop-ups, they are more likely to decide to stop viewing your website all together. It disrupts the flow and causes the opposite reaction of what you are wanting.


Not Utilizing SEO (Search Engine Optimization): If you are wanting your website to not only show what you do, but actually turn into leads and more customers, SEO is the only way to organically achieve this. I am not saying that you have to go through and do what a professional would do, but completely neglecting SEO is a guaranteed way to miss out on many customers and increased revenue through your online presence.


Compromising User Experience For Aesthetics: This is something that you want to avoid at all costs! You could build the most beautiful website, but if it is not user-friendly, it will never get you the results or customer interaction that you desire.





This is overall a much more simplified version of what a professional web designer would do, but this is intended to be a highly beginner friendly, easy to follow guide to get you started! The goal was to write this in a way, that you didn't have to be a digital specialist to understand the points being made throughout this blog.


Do not let yourself stress too much, trust the process, research as necessary, and do not get discouraged!


Now, go forth with all of your new knowledge and create that website, launch that business, and go be the successful BOSS that you are!

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