Website Design Principles

When it comes to effective design there are a few website design principles that you will need to keep in mind when building out your website.

I’m not just talking about functionality here. When users arrive at your website google factors in how they engage with your content.

If they arrive at your home page and your content doesn’t convince them to stay then Google will factor this into search engine rankings.

Customer Pain Points

First up we have the concept of building your landing page around the major pain points for your customers.

At the end of the day, this is why you’re in business, you solve a problem for your clients.

So let’s look at ways that you can weave in pain points and solutions into your digital marketing strategy.

By far the best way to observe this concept in action is to highlight a company that does a fantastic job when it comes to converting website traffic into leads and potential customers.

Airbnb

The landing page below allows potential customers to estimate their earning when it comes to being an Airbnb host.

The page tackles their customers bigest pain points head-on by outlining how Airbnb can help homeowners save up for home repairs and taking that dream trip away.

“Go the extra mile to actively provide answers to your customer’s problems”

In this case, Airbnb is selling an opportunity to become a host. They are selling the idea of being on that dream trip sailing off the coast of Airlie Beach.

A great feature to pay particular attention to is the call to action button at the top of the page.

This makes it as simple as possible when it comes to starting off on your journey to becoming a host.

When you provide your customers with a quick and easy solution to their main pain points you can be sure that they will be back again.

This is a fantastic way to establish your business as an authority online by establishing a level of trust with your online customers.

Taking Action

When a customer arrives on your website you want them to take action.

Whether it be to purchase your product, become a member or to sign up for an email list it’s essential that you direct your customers towards the action that you would like them to take.

When you bombard your customers with 101 different options on your home page you will find that your bounce rate will increase as your customers are feeling overwhelmed.

If you building out your websites home page make sure that you have the services that you over front and centre on the web page. Ideally, they will be able to be without the user having to scroll down the page at all.

If you provide multiple services here’s a three-step process to optimise your home page for customer engagement:

• Create a subscriber form to capture their email address and add it to the top of your page along with an image related to your business.
• Next up add your services below the image. Make sure that your users don’t need to scroll to see what you have to offer.
• Below your service adds a click-through option that is linked to an individual landing page for that service.

This method will allow you to reduce your bounce rate, capture emails for follow up marketing and to optimise the conversion rates for your services on offer. A Nerds World displays this design concept in a fantastic way in the image above.

Use relevant visuals where possible

There’s an old saying that a picture paints a thousand words and let’s be honest here pictures are a fantastic way to display data and other elements that can be rather boring in the text.To test out this concept lets dive headfirst into some raw statistics.

Studies show that people remember:

• 10% of what they hear
• 20% of what they read
• 80% of what they see and do

Odds are in this example your mind skipped straight to the visual before reading the text as its a lot easier to visualise than to read.

The visual element also paints a much better picture of how the percentages differ by providing a fantastic pie chart example.

By introducing visuals you are also making your content a lot more shareable on social media platforms, increase your click-through rates and breaks your content up into bite-sized pieces making it a lot less daunting.

Picking website colours

As a website designer here’s a topic that I need to cover quite a lot. It’s incredibly important that you select the right colours scheme for your website.

There’s nothing worse than trying to read someone’s content when they have chosen a difficult colour scheme for there website.

In some countries, guidelines have even been put in place to ensure that your website can be read by people of all ages.

When your colour matching on your website make sure that you design your colours in a way that directs the eye to the actions that you want your customers to take.

Here are a few quick tips when it comes to selecting your website’s colours:

• When selecting the colour of the call to action buttons make sure that you don’t use that colour anywhere else on the website.
• Avoid any conflicting colours that make the text hard to read. Hard to read text means a higher bounce rate.
• Change up your colours in sections where you want to draw attention to a specific section such as a product or service.
• Keep your colour scheme consistent across your website as well as your social media platforms. This is because people will often associate those colours with your brand.

When to socialise and when not to socialise

We are in a world where every man and his dog is on social media, quite literally. Doug the Pug has over 3.7 million follows on Instagram.

Although before you set out in your mission to be as popular as Doug by loading up your website with 101 social media buttons make sure that you don’t have these smothering your call to action content.

Remember your goal is to drive people from your social media platforms to your products and services, not the other way around. Unless you have Doug’s following and you are making money from brand endorsements this strategy will begin to harm your business.

I usually find it to be a good rule of thumb to add socials only where people expect to see them such as within the top and bottom menu bar.

This ensures that the website visitors only click on the socials once they are finished consuming the page’s content.

If you would still like to showcase your social media profile on your website at times it can be a great idea to take a snip as I have of Doug’s photo above to showcase the level of engagement that your social profile has.

When you provide a link to the posts page make sure that you select for it to open within a new tab to users can always come back to your blog post once visiting your socials.

Have a business blog

I know what your thinking here I couldn’t possibly have time to create a blog for my business those things are a lot of work.

Although time and time again I see businesses naming their online blogs as one of their most valuable assets.

Your blog is a unique opportunity to engage with your customers and to answer a lot of the questions that they have around your services.

For example, on my blog (shown above) I showcase a simple 5 step Facebook marketing strategy that steps my readers through the process of building their Facebook community.

This saves me having constantly answer any questions around Facebook marketing and also helps ensure that I am the go-to person when it comes to social media marketing.

Establish Landing Pages

Lucky last but certainly not least we have the concept of building landing pages for your website.

Landing pages are pages that usually highlight one specific service that you offer and the page is targeted at a popular keyword for your area. For example, if you are an interior designer in Bendigo you will target specific keywords around this Niche area.

Keywords that may come in handy could include interior design Bendigo, painting Bendigo and kitchens Bendigo.

By building a landing page for each of these keywords you are more likely to rank for these keywords and will achieve a higher customer conversion rate.

The above image is a snippet of a landing page that I have developed for small business website design packages.

The main goal is to have a clear and concise call to action at the top of the page while detailing my services without the user needing to scroll for more content.

These pages are relatively simple to piece together and should be requested when developing out your website design principles.

Most designers won’t include these as part of the quote so make sure that you put in a request for a few of these to be developed out for keywords within your local area.

Conclusion

When you are looking to develop out your website its essential that you put in the time and effort with your designer to map out a clear set of web design principles that will forge the foundations for your businesses website.

This article serves as a guide for a few of the main things that will need to be considered when it comes to developing out a website.

It may even be handy to print off this article and present it to your designer to ensure that the two of you remain on the same page.

The digital world is constantly changing and shifting although your design fundamentals will always hold strong.

To quote Steve Jobs ” Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works”.

This is why it’s important to get your website design principles down pat so your website can start working for your business. If you have any questions we run a organic SEO studio with a mission to help small businesses develop their digital launch platforms so feel free to reach out.