Web Design Best Practices For Small Business Websites

Did you know that the number of people accessing the internet now stands roughly at a whopping 4 billion worldwide? Which means, 50 per cent population of the world is now using the internet!

Quite clearly, having a website is important in today’s times where every business seems going online. Given the ever-rising nature of prospects and opportunities on the internet, it’d be a mistake not having a dedicated website for your business regardless of the domain and area of operation.

No matter how much you spend on social media and other types of paid advertising, they won’t be able to make for the lack of a website. After all, websites are where customers, or users, first head to in order to understand a company and to become familiar with its products and services.

More so, a dedicated website gives businesses a wonderful opportunity to connect to their customers by enriching them with all ideas and messages and information they want to convey to them. So, get a website designed and developed to clear any doubts users face in knowing and accessing your business.

What kind of website is needed for your business?

Well, it’s true that having a website is not enough as the stakes have gone notches up from a decade or so earlier. A lot of changes have come in the way web designs are leveraged and its essences are implemented.

Your website is supposed to have all those features both users and search engines like to have, including –

✓ Good websites are a blend of aesthetics and technical finesses

✓ User-friendly designs and features should be there

✓ SEO-friendly elements should be present to benefit from search engines

✓ Mobile-friendly aspects can’t be ignored as responsive design should be leveraged

✓ Users should feel secure while visiting websites and their communications should be encrypted

✓ Top websites deliver unique user experiences without ever confusing them at any stage of the visit

✓ Navigation should be smooth and clear while loading should not take time

✓ Multi-browser, multi-device support should be there

In a sense, the website for your small business should be designed and developed in a way to serve its constituents – both, users and search engines alike – with effortless ease. Not doing the same, or not giving equal weightage to both these parts can force it to lose lots of prospects for sure.

Why web design best practices?

Web design is a dynamic concept. Changes are very much part of it. So, businesses have to understand those changes and adopt to them to benefit from the latest trends in the market.

Here are reasons why you websites should keep pace with the web design best practices –

✓ Your website should be designed and developed keeping in mind only latest trends in the web industry

✓ Adhering to outdate design elements and practices means missing out on benefits that the latest provide

✓ A website redesign can also help when your old website is not doing well in the wake of changes in web design

Important web design best practices for your website

There are quite a few web design best practices that you should be using to benefit your small business website. Not doing the same can let your website lose out all those benefits easily available to other players in the domain.

Here are those web design best practices –

#1 A minimalist approach to home page

A good number of businesses now prefer to have a website that looks simple or conveys its ideas and messages in a simplistic manner. A simple and fresh design creates solid impression on users and helps them convert into prospects. The home page holds the key as users often land here first before going into the site. Here, you should adopt a minimalist approach and have all those basic information needed in order to convince users. The page should have texts, images or visual info in a right amount to inform and enrich, not overdo anything.

#2 A subtle showcasing of products and services

Products and services should be shown to users the moment they land on your website. Many web designs fail to do this which is a wrong approach for your business. Users often don’t have time to scan your content through and in such situations, you need to capture their attention without looking or behaving intrusive. The home page is surely not the place to showcase all your products or services but the most important one/s could be shown using right kind of quality images or videos or infographics.

#3 Better conversions through better site load times

Website designs should be aimed at enhancing conversions by giving users a superior website load times. If the site takes time in loading, its conversions then will be impacted. Heavy sites or those rich in graphics often take time in loading and this aspect should not be lost on you. So, even if your site is heavy, you can make it load faster using right bandwidth and hardware infrastructure. This arrangement becomes even more important for those businesses having a huge traffic to grapple with on a regular basis.

#4 Give focus to easy accessibility of the website

The purpose of putting up a website on the internet is to let people know your business, understand your products or services and serve their own purposes. All this is only possible when the site has given proper attention to easy accessibility for users. So, the design and navigation should be consistent right through. There should not be great variance in layout and design on different pages. Navigation buttons should be visible, there should be clear call-to-action buttons and there has to be visual signs or clues at right places. These factors help users access the website as easily as they would like.

#5 Organized site and structured manner of information sharing

Both users and search engines like organized websites. Which means, the sites that present information in a structured manner will win the trust of users and search engines in a due manner. This is not possible unless the texts, graphics and photos are in sync with the design and layout. So, the site should not look disordered; should have legible fonts; important texts should be properly emphasized and links should be clear. Simply put, users don’t want to feel confused when they visit the site and this can only be avoided by keeping things organized.

#6 Fresh and unique content

Good designs are those that have fresh and unique content. Let alone users, even search engines give superior rankings to sites whose content is fresh, unique and updated on a regular basis. Be it texts, images, videos or any other form of content – they all should be up-to-date and relevant and this is the only way to keep your target audience engaged and hoked for longer. You can’t expect dated content to benefit the site beyond a basic level.

#7 Leverage responsive design

Your web design can’t ignore the ever-swelling tide of users accessing the web using mobile devices of different varieties. Thus, your web design should give a consistent look and feel to users across devices. You just can’t get a website developed for desktop audiences only as this means, you won’t be able to benefit from the mobile segment. With responsive design, you can cater all those users accessing web irrespective of the device type they use. Quite clearly, this is the way to go and let users and their web access potential be tapped to the full.

#8 SEO-friendly web design

Search engines are something nobody can ignore in today’s time where visibility is everything. So, your web design should understand the extent to which SEO can create the difference. There has to be some additions, tweaks and changes to the design to make it SEO friendly in nature. This way, a business can save a lot of money that would often go into availing digital marketing services. So, if a website is designed keeping in mind SEO, it will then surely bring ranking and visibility benefits. That’s why, it makes sense to hire capable developers familiar with latest web design trends to bring home all the advantages.

#9 Social Media Integration

Social media is now a key aspect of internet marketing. With userbase running into millions, these platforms expand the reach and impact of web design and open the world of opportunities. The latest web design trends is to integrate social media with the website and multiply the benefits to the business. So, popular social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube can now be integrated into the website to boost the visibility and ranking of websites. The purpose of the integration is to add value to the level of engagement of the business.

In overall, these are some web design trends and practices your website and business should pay heed to. So, hire one of top web designing companies and keep pace with the time. After this is all what matters at a time where the internet is the biggest marketplace in the world.