With more and more CMS systems like WordPress, Webflow, Wix, one.com webbuilder and other similar systems, it has actually become relatively easy to build your own website or webshop. So why even spend thousands of dollars to hire a pro web designer or web agency to build it for you instead of just doing it yourself? Before we even start to answer that question, let’s take a look at why a good web design is so important if you want to succeed with your website.
STRUCTURE AND NAVIGATION – All ESSENTIAL PARTS OF ANY WEBSITE
Before you even start building or designing your website, you need to plan the structure and navigation of the whole website. If people who visit your website find it difficult to find what they are looking for, then there is a good chance that they will just leave your website and move on to another website instead. People usually use certain patterns when searching for information, products or services on a website and if you have no experience with web design, chances are you don’t know the optimal way to build this navigation, which will likely hurt your website or web shop conversions. Without a proper navigation you can have the most beautiful web design but it will likely be converting very well.
Read these few tips to get a great web design
FONTS AND COLOURS SHOULD MATCH YOUR AUDIENCE
Unlike what people often believe, it’s not always enough to have a great looking website or webshop with a killer webdesign. Especially if your colours, your fonts and overall style don’t really appeal to your visitors. For example, if you’re creating an online shop that sells clothes for toddlers, you’ll want to have a light blue section for the boys and a pink section for the girls. That makes sense to most people, but what if you sell organic food? Most people would say green would be an obvious colour choice here. And what about all the other niches? If you don’t get the colours and style right, your visitors won’t find the website or webshop quite as appealing as it could have been. Something that may also hurt your conversion rate and make you loose potential customers.
MOBILE-FRIENDLY AND RESPONSIVE DESIGN IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER
Most people visiting a website here in 2022 are actually using their mobile phone or tablet. Nearly 70% of all web traffic comes from mobile devices today. So having a website that works on all devices is now more important than ever. Building elements of the website so that they work on all devices can in many cases be quite a difficult set up without any CSS/HTML knowledge. So many choose unfortunately – not to focus too much on this part. If you don’t, you’re not only giving your visitors a bad experience, but it’s also something you can be penalized in the search engines for not doing, which will affect your SEO optimizations. You can find out more information about a responsive webdesign here.
CORE WEB VITALS ARE ALSO IMPORTANT
Everyone who visits a website obviously wants it to load as quickly as possible and for elements not to move around during loading. There’s nothing worse than having to wait for the website to finish loading, especially if you’re not quite sure it’s the right page you’ve landed on. Studies show that if a website is slower than 3 seconds, you’ve already lost over 30% of visitors. It is therefore important to have good Core Web Vitals if you want to give your visitors the best possible experience and have a greater chance of converting them into customers. But another important aspect of Core Web Vitals is that nowadays, it is also an important part of SEO. This means that if you have weak Core Web Vitals, it can also hurt your search engine rankings. Where Core Web Vitals overlaps with the web design part, is optimizing images and the use of static spaces so that the website is not moving around while the page is loading. This can for many be really annoying, so it’s great that this is also now and SEO ranking factor.
CONVERSION OPTIMIZATION IS ALSO IMPORTANT
Most people think that conversion optimization is only important for a webshop, but that’s not entirely true. If you have a regular website, then you most likely want your visitors to fill out your contact form, call you, sign up for your newsletter or download a pdf document. This is also a conversion that has some value to you, and thus is something that can be optimized for. Many times it’s easier (and cheaper) to double your conversion rate, compared to doubling your traffic. Having an effective website that converts well is a must for almost everyone. That’s why it’s usually pretty important to find a good web agency to do the job for you – it really can make a huge difference in many cases. So saving money on your website is often the last place you should save, as you may end up with a website that isn’t effective enough to sell or get your message across.
GETTING VISTORS TO YOUR WEBSITE
A website with no visitors are pretty much useless. So after you have spend tons of hours getting the perfect webdesign, an easy navigation, mobile friend and a fast website, you will need to drive more traffic to your website or webshop. This can often be done by online marketing such as SEO or Google Ads. You can more more about about this topic in this article about online marketing.
CONCLUSION
As you can see, there are many things to consider when making a new website, and having a great looking web design is just a small part of it. Almost anyone can buy a nice template and quickly get a website or webshop up and running. But making a website that actually works great is a whole different story. Hopefully these things we discussed in this article will make it a little easier for you to build the perfect website.
