Marketing that Doesn’t Suck: Good Web Design
What to Focus on for Killer Web Design
Our last post highlighted the things you’ll see with bad web design, so let’s flip it and look at this from a more positive perspective: what you should focus on to ensure you’re falling into the category of good web design. You don’t just want to avoid the bad things – you need to proactively make good choices.
Here are five things to look for when designing or updating your website to ensure it doesn’t suck:
1. Audience Focused
When you’re writing the copy for your website, it’s easy to make it all about you. After all, it’s a website about your company! But instead of talking about why you’re awesome, explain how that benefits your customers. Lay out the ways their business will succeed or improve by working with you. Present your services or products in the context of problem solving, highlighting the types of issues that often face your target customers.
2. Responsive
Like we said in our last post, we’re not going to stop talking about this one. It’s one of the top ways we help our clients, so do yourself a favor and put it at the top of your priority list. To recap, a responsive site is one that looks good on all devices, including mobile, tablet and desktop. A responsive site has so many benefits, from SEO rankings to making viewing easy on your visitors to simply looking like you’re up with the times. Plus, you eliminate the redundant need for a mobile site, which means less to maintain and more SEO power for your one and only main site.
3. Mobile-Friendly
Yes, designing your site as responsive should mean it’s mobile friendly, but it’s important to pay particular attention to this functionality. Once you’ve made it to the editing and QA phase of launching a new site, take a particularly critical look at it on your phone. Do some sections look too big or small? Does it take way too much scrolling to get where you need to go? Would it function better if the top navigation followed you as you scroll? Make sure your developers are on top of these issues!
4. Logical Architecture
You may be used to how your company’s products, services or departments are structured, but will they make sense to a new audience? In other words, don’t just build your site based on your typical organization structure without thinking about it critically. Maybe you go back to that audience focused point above – what would someone be looking for? Instead of listing all your services, perhaps it would better serve you to restructure based on problems solved or vertical markets you work with regularly. And make sure those commonly asked questions are easy to find answers for – whether that’s about your locations, pricing, experience, etc.
5. Intuitive User Experience
This last item kind of sums up all of the above. It’s time to make sure the site works well across the board. Keep in mind both these features you want to include as well as the ones you want to avoid. Put yourself in the shoes of all the types of visitors you hope to attract: prospective clients, partners and recruits. Get some outside help for a new perspective.
Designing and building a website that doesn’t suck requires paying attention to so many factors. It’s something we do here at Pom every day, so reach out for a consultation to learn about our process and how we help clients put their best foot forward on the web.
