The most successful websites are pleasing to the eye and easy to navigate while communicating your unique brand. Here are four best practices to help you achieve a website that is well designed, functional and will build your business.
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Streamline Your Navigation
Navigation is the top priority for the best user experience. How intuitively you design your website will determine how easily and quickly your visitor can browse your site and find what they need. Limit your top or side navigation bar to seven components, including the home page, product or service pages, your blog, and contact details.
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Create Open Design Styles
Using open spaces and fewer structured block panels will make your website look sleeker. To make your content take up less space without sacrificing quality, use accordions to expand or collapse long text.
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Use Effective High-Level Messaging
Focus on headings, subheadings, and bullet points to convey information succinctly and help web visitors quickly find what they need instead of scrolling through endless pages of text. Work with your graphic designer to optimize the headlines for selected keywords to promote better search-ability.
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Highlight Your Blog and Resource Pages
Consider migrating a large amount of content into a blog or a separate resource section. While blogs organize and archive your posts and make content easier to find, you don’t have to use the term “Blog”. Consider “More Info,” “Resources,” or “News” instead. Sections like this break up information into ‘visual bites’ so that visitors can quickly scan it. It is also more visually appealing.
Sharing content on your blog or resources section is also beneficial to your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy. Search engines prefer larger websites that consistently have new content, so it’s essential to update your website with fresh posts regularly.
A streamlined and uncluttered web design is more comfortable to navigate and means your customers will find your products and services more efficiently. It is one of the easiest and most effective ways to communicate your brand story and improve your business.
At AN Design and Communications, we deliver bilingual website design services that build your brand and business. We offer branding and logo design, graphic design solutions, and conference materials in addition to responsive web design. Browse our website to see how we can help your business.