DEV Community

Cover image for 5 Essentials of a Successful Website Design
ClassyBusinessWomen
ClassyBusinessWomen

Posted on • Edited on

5 Essentials of a Successful Website Design

Nowadays, trying to run a business, but not having a website to back it up is just plain reckless. Not only will you be significantly lowering your exposure and thus reducing your chances for success if you don’t have a website, but you’ll also be missing out on a lot of lucrative business opportunities.

However, simply having a website is not enough either. Instead, you should focus your efforts on trying to make it not only fast and secure, but also well-designed. There are some key features that are the same for every well-designed website which is why you need to learn more about them so that you can implement them in your website design. So, when designing your website, pay special attention to:

Website safety

First and foremost, you need to make sure that your website is safe. This means that, aside from it being safe from the outside threats, you need to offer your website visitors a guarantee that the information they leave on your site won’t be used or sold to a third party, and that all the sensitive details they leave – such as their address, date of birth, credit card info and so on – will be kept entirely confidential. One of the ways you can achieve this is by implementing an SSL certificate in your website design which will offer a secure connection between your visitors’ browsers and your web server. If your customers are sure that their information is safe from any potential threats, they will be more likely to do business with you. 

Website speed

According to research, our attention span reduces significantly when we browse the Internet. Some experts suggest that your website needs to be able to fully load in 3 seconds – or even less, if possible – to avoid having people abandon it. However, this doesn’t apply solely to your website’s homepage; it applies to all pages. So, make sure you optimize your website – and all the elements of it, such as visuals and audio – for both desktop and mobile devices to avoid losing customers over a slow-loading design. Also, minimize the number of popups and interactive elements you have on your website because they can really reduce the website’s loading speed. 

Visual hierarchy

Visual hierarchy is another important element of a well-designed website. What this does is the influence which aspects of your website will grab your visitor’s attention and draw their eyes most. So, make sure that the visuals on your website are informative, and that they denote content relationships, as well as create an emotional impact. If you manage to take care of this aspect of web design properly, you can rest assured that your website will encourage your visitors to take the desired action. Furthermore, make sure that your CTA (call to action) buttons are easily noticeable so that your visitors can take the desired action with ease. 

User experience

A good website needs to hone user experience by being responsive and user-friendly. That’s why you need to make sure that all the pages of your website are optimized, and that the browsing experience on your website is intuitive. For instance, an example of a good website design is definitely the Classy Business Women, a website for women in business where browsing is made super intuitive and easy. This is definitely one of the reasons this website is so popular. Aside from that, make sure that your website is carefully organized and categorized by relevance, to avoid having people abandon it because they weren’t able to find what they were looking for. 

Content

Both consumers and search engines simply adore content that’s new and fresh, so it’s important that you create a good content strategy. Now, when it comes to content, there are a lot of options you can opt for, such as eBooks, whitepapers, videos, images, blog posts and so on. While all of these definitely drive interest, deciding to create a company blog is definitely the best way to go, as the audience appears to find it most interesting. To make the most of your blog, make sure you come up with fresh, original content on a regular basis, and keep it well-organized. If you offer a myriad of interesting topic ideas, conduct keyword research, optimize the content for various search engines and share it on social media, you’ll definitely see the true power and pull really see the power and pull that blogging can bring.

As you can see, creating a well-designed website is not difficult if you know what you should pay extra attention to. So, make sure you approach this carefully, determine your goals beforehand and know exactly what you are trying to achieve with your website so that you have no trouble implementing all the necessary solutions. Finally, stay in the loop with all the latest news and updates so that you can act fast and adjust your website in order to avoid making some potentially detrimental mistakes.

Top comments (0)