How your website looks can make or break your ability to generate revenue. According to Adobe, two-thirds of users would much rather consume something beautifully designed than look at a plain page. The same study found that 38% of people would stop browsing a site if its pages were unattractive.
With so much emphasis on design, there are a few things you could learn before you put your plans into motion. Whether you’re a photographer and want to showcase your skills, or an ecommerce owner building a website to host hundreds of products, how you present your site is everything. Here are four things you should know about website design:
Images Are More Important Than You Think
The saying goes, “An image is worth 1,000 worths.” But if you optimize your images correctly, an image can be worth 1,000 clicks. Using plugins like Yoast, or other image optimization software, can help you determine how you can get the most out of your images. Title text, alt text, links, and more can all be valuable additions to your images, and it’s important to take advantage of those opportunities.
Images aren’t just about throwing some pretty stock photos up your site. Even if you take your own photographs, you still need to offer your visitors more. This is where visual content marketing comes into play. A Social Media Examiner report found that 37% of marketers said visual marketing was a critical component to their businesses (coming in second to blogs). Furthermore, 74% of marketers use images primarily in the social media marketing campaigns.
Text Is Important, Too
According to AdWeek, more than 80% of the information we consume online everyday is text-based. And while we do need to consume large amounts of text, most people prefer text in moderation. This is why over 90% of Google users will click on a link that appears only on the first page of Google, failing to move on to the second or third pages.
That being said, how you communicate with your audience across all channels is also critical. From your webpage to your social media outlets, everything matters. You need to maintain a consistent brand all around. This means, you wouldn’t want to be too corporate on your website and then funny and playful on Twitter and Facebook. If you’re not too talented with words, hire a freelance copywriter or agency to convey your vision for you.
Keep The Flash To A Minimum
Regardless of how good Flash looks, it can hurt your site’s SEO. It’s important to not be tempted to deck your site in Flash animations in order to keep your page high up in the rankings. This is because Google’s algorithms cannot currently read text in Flash, and relies on HTML to be able to tell what’s important in content.
If you already heavily rely on Flash, you should work with a web designer or engineer to figure out how you can translate your current pages to another programming language that will get you the most of your website. Fade effects and other Flash techniques can be more hurtful than helpful, and any seasoned SEO individual would highly advise you against Flash (if used too much). Furthermore, Google and Mozilla both pulled support from Flash after discovering it had gaping security holes for users. HTML 5 is just as effective, more user and SEO-friendly, and quicker.
Choosing The Right CMS Is Very Important
There are many good platforms out there, but that doesn’t mean that all of them are for you. You’ll need to consider what works best for your needs. Maybe you’d prefer a CRM that combines multiple solutions into one, like WordPress.
Your decision should also be based on your skill level. If you have little coding experience and prefer a hands-off system, a platform like WordPress would be better. If you want to get your hands into the mix, perhaps Drupal offers more for you. Reach out to customer service teams to discuss how their CRM options can achieve your goals.
Kidal Delonix is a contributor to Mr. Hoffman's blog. The views and opinions are entirely his/her own and may not reflect Mr Hoffman's views.
