Easy Ways to Improve Web Design
Earlier this summer, CIO published an article with thirteen simple web design tips. Since the goal of their article was to quickly cover quite a few different tips, I wanted to pick out the four best from their list and provide some additional information to show just how easy they are to implement:
Use a Professional Logo and Link It to Your Homepage
Plenty of businesses underestimate just how influential their logo can be to website visitors. Because they don’t think it’s truly that important, they may settle for something that’s not fully polished. A common example of this is when a business uses a default WordPress theme and doesn’t bother to change the stock header.
The reason this tip is easy and effective is you don’t have to design the logo yourself. Instead, you can let an experienced design company handle it for you. Once you have your logo, the best place to put it is in the upper left corner of your site. The other component of this tip is to make sure your tech team links the logo to your homepage. Even if your site has a sub-domain like blog.yoururl.com, it’s best to keep your logo link consistent and just add the sub-domain link to your main navigation menu.
Remove Elements from Your Design
When people think of web design, they often assume it’s about adding as many elements to a page as possible. But the reality is the best web design strategy is one that focuses on emphasizing what matters most to your business. Whether the goal of your site is to generate leads or convert visitors directly into customers, every design element should support that goal. If you can identify elements that don’t play a direct role in supporting the main goal of your site, the best thing you can do is remove them!
Upgrade Generic Stock Photos
Conversion tests have shown that visitors generally have a positive response to photos on business websites. That statement is especially true for photos that have people’s faces in them. The one exception is if a photo is from an overly used stock library. If your site has stock photos that you’ve seen on other websites, it’s time to find more original photos or even take your own to use as replacements.
Optimize Your Photos for Mobile Devices
While we’re on the subject of photos, be sure that all of your site’s photos are optimized to load as quickly as possible on mobile devices. Even though mobile connections are significantly faster than they were just a few years ago, that doesn’t mean they’re always as fast as people would like. The best way to prevent mobile visitors from becoming impatient and abandoning your site before it finishes loading is to minimize the file size of images when they’re loaded on a mobile device.
Although the tips we covered are all quite easy to implement, if you take the time to complete each one, you’ll be very pleased with the cumulative positive impact they have on your site’s performance!