Having an effective website goes beyond great design. Visitors can be amazed by a pretty website, but if that’s all there is to it, you won’t get the best possible return on investment.
When designing a website, you first need to determine your marketing goals, and then design your site around the actions you want your visitors to take. Great web design makes important content or desired actions obvious and appealing to your visitors. Here’s how to accomplish those goals:
Strategic Layout
Your website needs to make your visitor want to continue reading. Use your websites layout to organize and highlight important content you want a visitor to see. Your main goal is to tell your visitor what your website is about and give them an action to take next.
Common objectives include:
Drive traffic to an online store.
Visit the services or products page.
Subscribe to newsletters.
Fill out a contact form.
User Friendly Navigation
Confusing or complicated navigation will quickly drive away customers. Customers should be able to know where they are on your website a all times and should be able to find pages they have already visited easily. Ensure that your navigation bar is easily accessible and easy to understand, and that it is the exact same on every page and located in the same place. Customers should never have to hunt down your navigation.
Establish a clear “call to action”
If you want customers to invest in your products or services, tell them how to do it. You don’t want to leave them scratching their heads wondering how to do it. Explain exactly what you want them to do and make it easy for them to do it.
For example, if you want them to buy a product, present them with a call to action like this:
“Click here now to order ‘your product here’ today!”
Give your customers easy to understand instructions, and let them know what they can expect when they click on the link that leads them to the order page.
