What Makes a Web Design Effective
Effective web design is more than just a pretty design converted into a web friendly format. At the end of the day, results are what matter the most so it's important to ensure that the website is effective. Here are the most important aspects of web design that create real results.
Search Engine Optimization
Being visible on search engine is often the way people find your website. Therefore effort should be put into search engine optimization. In addition to web design, the website has to be coded in a certain way for search engines to 'like' it. This is where an experienced web design company can help you. In addition to properly structured website code, your website should also have written content valuable to the visitor. This is something you can generate yourself - but if you would rather leave it to the professionals, many web design companies offer professional copywriting services to ensure that your content is written and structured properly.
Speed
If the website takes too long to load, the visitor usually leaves and all the hard work is lost. Therefore as a first step it's critical to choose a powerful web hosting platform combined with a web design that loads fast. If this important first chain in the link breaks then the rest will not matter anymore. It's highly recommended not to select the cheapest web hosting option or a web designer who does not know how to produce proper code and fails to optimize graphics and video for the web.
Engaging
If the design does not engage the visitor again leaves and the goal of customer contacting you remains unaccomplished. First impression is always important and this is very true in web design world as well. The web design should be up-to-date, pleasing and interacting with the website should be easy. At this point you've managed to attract the visitor to come to your website, now the next step is to make them stay. If you run a baking blog, publish great recipes and perhaps run a little contest where the visitors can submit their favourite recipes to share with other users. Give them a reason to stay - and come back later.
Logical
Website can be stunning but if it doesn't make sense the user will get frustrated and potentially leave. Navigation should make sense and so should the placement of written content and graphical components. The written content should be supported by visuals that make sense and interacting with the website elements should not create unexpected results.
Call-to-Action & Conversion
Once we've passed the earlier hurdles and the user has stayed on the website for a while, we need the user to do something. This is where call-to-action comes in place. What we want the user to do varies by industry, website and goals. In your case it may be the user filling a contact form. Or perhaps in your case a phone call is better. Or maybe you want them to register on the website and create an online profile. Call-to-action items should be clearly visible and not hard to find - whether it's a phone number, contact button or an email address. Make it as easy as possible for the visitor to accomplish what is important to you.
Mobile Version
Last but not least is having a proper mobile version. Not only is makes your web site easier to use on mobile devices but it also helps with search engine optimization. Depending on industry, mobile web users can range anything between few percent to vast majority of your visitors. This ever-growing market segment is so massive these days that they need to be served and not ignored. It's not uncommon these days to create a mobile website first and desktop version as a secondary item.