Web Design Tips
4 Easy to Avoid Web Design Mistakes
As a small business, your website is of the utmost importance. When visitors make it to your website they are coming for a specific reason and you want to be sure that you can quickly, and efficiently, provide them with a solution to their needs. If your website design is flawed and difficult to navigate, your company could be missing out on a lot of potential leads and ultimately revenue. Here are a few mistakes to avoid in your website design so you can maximize your website’s effectiveness and provide a positive experience to your customers.
1. Understanding Your Target Market:
Many companies make the mistake of not properly understanding their target audience and the different types of customers that fit that description. This often results in web designs that are not optimized and don't work properly for the audience they are trying to attract and engage. Figuring out your target demographic can be extremely helpful in determining the website design approach that works best to give visitors a positive experience while they are using your website.
2. Having an Unclear Call to Action:
What is your goal once users have found your website? Be sure to direct your visitors clearly to this goal. Help show them where the next step is through a concise and prominent call to action. One of the best ways to do this is to first ask yourself what the quickest and easiest way is for visitors to get value from your product or service, then create a call to action (CTA) that helps you quickly give the customer access to that value or collect their data so you can deliver it to them right away.
3. Stale or Boring Content:
Users want your website’s information to be the latest, most up-to-date content available. If your website has very old content that hasn’t been updated, many customers may assume that you are being the times or might not have nice services or products. Additionally, content that is not very valuable, uninteresting, or not engaging can make your visitors lose attention and click away. Work on a way to write your content in a professional but appealing manner that is easy and interesting for your target audience read and stay interested in or want to come back to read more later.
4. The DIY Route:
Your website is the best way for you to interact with your customers. You want to be sure you make your web design, layout, and content choices a priority and make sure there are reasons behind why you made the design decisions you did. A website designed without a professional web and graphic designer involved can potentially lead to mistakes or missed opportunities that result in a loss of revenue due to your customers leaving your site early or not finding what they wanted to, being unimpressed with the design, or not being as engaged as they could have been. A bad design can negatively impact your customers' thinking by making them associate your services and brand with an unprofessional appearance.
These points are just a things to keep in mind to help you avoid a major problem with user experience in your company’s website design and content. It is especially beneficial to make your customers happy and that applies to their experience with your company not just in person but online. If you need some help or have any questions feel free to contact us and we will be happy to help you any time.
If you have questions or are thinking about making a change in your business’ web presence don’t hesitate to contact All in Web Pro for a professional consultation today.
7 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Building a Website
Want to build a new website?
Exciting right!? Whether you're planning to hire a web designer or interested in starting a do-it-yourself (DIY) website project, having a smart approach and knowing where to start can save you time and money. We want to help you with this important and exciting process, and have written a few important things to keep in mind to help make your first steps easy and stress-free. Many people can get overwhelmed by the many different options, new terms, and sometimes complicated features they hear about when speaking with web designers. But if you ask yourself a few simple questions you can easily prepare yourself with a strong foundation of the right information to help make your next steps and discussions with any web designers much more productive and efficient.
In this post we've created a list of helpful questions to ask yourself that will help tremendously if you take a little time to answer them before contacting web designers about creating a new website or even if you want to build it yourself:
1. How will your company benefit from a new website or redesign?
- Do you want to increase revenue and online sales?
- Do you want to bring more traffic to your site?
- Do you want to integrate any new features into your website?
- Do you just want your website to be modern and mobile-friendly?
2. Who are your primary audience and target visitors?
- Do you have a younger or older audience?
- Will most of your visitors already know your brand when they arrive, or visit after only seeing an advertisement without knowing much about your brand?
- Are your visitors interested in learning something or taking a specific action?
- What action do you want first time visitors to take?
- What kinds of actions do you want returning visitors or existing customers to take?
- Do you prefer visitors to call you, book something, buy something, sign up for something, or just submit their email address?
3. What content do you need, and what content do you already have?
- How much information needs to be on your website?
- Do you know what pages you want to have, the names of the pages, and text they will contain?
- Do you have photos already, or do you mind using stock photos on your website?
- Do you have any graphical elements to add, and have they already been designed?
- Do you already have a logo designed?
- Do you need any custom graphics or icons to communicate your message?
4. Do you have your domain, hosting, or company email already?
- Have you thought of or purchased a domain for your website yet?
- Have you decided what hosting company to go with and what type of hosting you'll need?
- Do you have a company email setup with your domain name in it?
5. Have you researched what your competition is doing?
- What kind of website are they using?
- How does their content compare to what you want on your site?
- What 'calls to action' (CTA) do they use?
- What products or services do they emphasize most?
- What is the structure and sitemap of their website?
- What special features or functionality does their website use?
6. How will you market your website & drive visitors to it?
- Will you continually update your content to provide new valuable content for visitors?
- Will you use social media activity and networks to drive people to your site?
- Will you use online, print, radio, or TV advertising to drive traffic?
- Do you want to pay for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to rank well in Google?
- Do you need traffic right away or are you happy to have traffic grow slowly as you add more content to your website or social media streams?
7. How Do You Measure Success and Optimize For It?
- Are you considering site traffic monitoring systems?
- Do you want to track ROI for conversions per advertisement?
- Will you try to track total sales, or be able to identify sales from different channels?
- Will you use outside sales and marketing subcontractors, or your own in-house team?
For measuring advertising performance and optimizing to improve it, you may want to consider strategies such as A/B testing, SEO, Content Generation, Ad Conversion Tracking, asking leads how they heard about you, using and comparing multiple channels to drive traffic from social media and online content distribution networks, in addition to traditional print, radio, & TV placement.
Don't be afraid to ask for help.
Be sure to keep these tips in mind when you're considering building your next website. You will be much more prepared if you take a few minutes to consider each question, learn what the terms mean if any are new to you, and don't be afraid to ask more questions. If you have get stuck on any of these questions, or feel want to have someone double check your answers, feel free to reach out to a professional at anytime!
All in Web Pro is here to help when you need us. Feel free to leave a comment below, or give us a call at our Las Vegas office at 702.331.0650!
Las Vegas Website Design Company Tips: Less is More
As a Las Vegas Website Design Company we like sharing tips to help you improve your online business and brand. As Google and user behavior has evolved over the past few years, the theme of 'less is more' has never been so important as it is today. A website with too much clutter can become difficult to navigate, while a more stripped down look can appear more sleek and modern. This direction of minimal and simplified web design has been trending for a while now, and it's important to take the potential benefits of this design philosophy seriously. Here are a few tips on how a more simple website design helps improve the user experience of your visitors.
1. Only the Essentials:
One of the first things to do when seeking improvement in your website design is to limit your website to the essentials. The process of trimming down the website can be a challenging one but is definitely a process worth some attention. A good rule of thumb to follow is the 80 - 20 rule, which states that 20% of what’s on a page should give 80% of its value. Consider what content on your pages are most essential and where you want your visitor’s attention to really be.
2. Number of Pages:
Having enough pages on your website is important for SEO purposes, however, along the same lines as what’s been said above, you don’t want to go overboard. You want to make sure your website design is user-friendly, don’t make it too difficult for your visitors to navigate by giving them too many choices of where to click to find what they need, it might make them not want to return. One way to still have lots of pages and content while still keeping your web design clean and organized is to utilize categories and sub categories within your main site pages and blog to minimize the number of options a user is presented when first deciding where to go to find what they’re looking for.
3. Consider What’s Above the Fold:
When a user loads any page your website, the first things they see is the area of your website usually referred to as “above the fold”. This refers specifically to the area of your website that appears in a user's browser before they scroll down. This area often changes depending on the size of the browser window you view a website on. But being aware that this area is the first impression your visitors see, it’s best for a website’s design to carefully consider the first impression and type of content you want your visitors see at first glance. Although it’s been shown that most users naturally scroll down webpages to view additional content on websites, it’s important to consider what information, media, or call-to-action you want your visitors to see first. It could determine whether they stay or click-away.
4. Fewer But Carefully Selected Colors:
Don’t go crazy with too many different types of colors for your website design. When in doubt, find a small handful of colors and stick to those, anything else may become a distraction or complicate the user’s visual experience. Consult with a professional web & graphic designer when selecting your website’s color scheme and background elements.
If you need a trusted, Las Vegas website design firm, look no further than All in Web Pro. Our experienced web and graphic design team will work with you to find your brand’s voice and help you translate it onto your webpages. If you are ready to take your brand to the next level, contact All in Web Pro today.