25 Essential Web Design Tips To Improve Your Website

Have you ever stopped and asked yourself why a good website is essential for your business or product brand? Why are professional web and UX design services necessary in the modern era?

It only takes 0.05 seconds for people to create either a positive or negative opinion about your website. Yes, you read that right. It only takes 50 milliseconds to impress your audience, or you’ll lose them for good.

Since we live in a digital era, having a well-designed business website can instantly help you form a good impression on your prospective customers. It allows visitors to navigate the website with ease and provide a great overall user experience.

If you’re looking to future-proof your website, you’re in the right place. This article will talk about the 25 essential web design tips you need to follow to get more value from your visitors. But before we go any further, let’s briefly discuss what web design is first.

What are the Essentials of Designing a Good Website?

In a nutshell, the importance of a good website for a business is that it’s responsible for creating the overall look and feel when you’re using a website. It’s the process of planning and conceptualizing your content—from the layout to colors, fonts, and graphics.

What makes website design essential is that it impacts your conversions and credibility. If the design of your business website does not prioritize user experience, then this might be the ultimate problem that will affect your business’ success.

Always keep in mind that web design goes beyond aesthetics. Outdated, overcrowded, and broken websites will hurt your brand more than they should. It will also contribute to why your website might look and feel irrelevant to some people.

But no website is perfect. So if you haven’t optimized your website in a long time, then here are 25 essential website design tips that will help you outshine your competition in the years to come.

25 Essential Web Design Tips to Increase Conversions

1. Make it as simple as possible

The primary purpose of your website is to communicate your core message instantaneously. The fewer visitors have to read, the better they’ll be able to process your content. They should be able to quickly scan the page and get what they need without taking too much of their time.

There are many tips for designing a website layout. Always try to appeal to your visitors’ emotions rather than the word count of your site. The fewer words you put in, the more effective your website design will be.

2. Is it readable?

You should pay attention to the importance of a good website for your business because great designs make the content you’ve put out easy to understand.

When you focus on improving the readability of your website, it increases the chance that your potential clients will read and interact with the content you post.

3. Images are critical

Most of the initial information people consume on websites is visual, so communicating with images is always better than text.

Images provide a deeper explanation to texts as it breaks up the written content into understandable pieces. In addition, high-quality images create an impression of credibility and immense professionalism in the visitor’s mind.

4. Your headline should focus on your keyphrase

Your headline should assure them that they’re in the right place—wordy and vague headlines will only confuse your audience.

Use your target keyphrases on your headline to win them over. Write what your company is about, and make sure that you explain it thoroughly as they scroll.

5. Always put your CTA at the bottom

Putting your CTA at the top of your page is too aggressive. Visitors visiting your site for the first time have no idea what you offer yet, which is why it’s safe to assume that not all of them are ready to take action on the first visit.

It takes a lot of persuasions and convincing before you start leading them to the next step they should take.

6. Stick with familiar grounds

In addition, for e-commerce websites especially, your page’s call-to-action should always be consistent.

If you’re choosing, for example, “BUY NOW” as your CTA, make sure it’s the same on every page. It would help if you didn’t put “BUY NOW” on the first page and then “CLICK TO PURCHASE” on the next. Inconsistency is confusing and gives off a very questionable and harmful impression.

7. Answer all your visitor’s questions

As much as you want to seal the deal right away, make sure that your website’s content can seamlessly address questions and provide strong evidence that will answer all of your visitor’s questions instantly.

8. Never overcrowd your site

A website design has numerous components to create the perfect user experience. Although, with all these components, it’s easy to overcrowd your website.

Modern, sleek, and clean designs are always better than overcrowded websites with too much going on. Whitespace is okay, and most often than not, people like websites with low visual complexity.

9. Choose a theme that supports plugins

Plugins such as W3 Total Cache, Wordfence, Imagify, and Rank Math SEO are necessary for WordPress websites. Choosing a theme that can support all essential WordPress plugins is one of the most critical steps when you’re creating your website.

10. Eliminate carousels and sliders

The problem with sliders and carousels is that visitors might only see the first slide. In addition, the content on the slides is less likely to be seen, and calls to action are unlikely to be clicked.

Sure, they were popular in the early 2000s—but in today’s era, they are more effective on social media instead of being a part of the website.

11. Don’t use tabs and accordions

The majority of website visitors prefer scanning instead of clicking to reveal information. If you have essential information that still needs to be clicked or open a new tab to see it, then they most likely won’t do it.

Having information readily available is always easier and better than hiding it in tabs and accordions.

12. Make your design mobile-friendly

There is no doubt that most of the world accesses the internet through their mobile devices. Therefore, if your website is not mobile-friendly, it won’t perform well.

Another thing is that search engines like Google know that smartphone owners use their devices more than their laptops at least once per day. And as a result, Google prioritizes websites optimized for mobile devices by displaying their sites on the first page.

13. Avoid stock images as much as possible

Stock images NEVER feel genuine. Even with their big smiles, stock images don’t seem to build trust.

Why? Because visitors prefer to see real people who work at the company instead of people in stock photos who look forced to strike a pose.

14. Be aware of your 404s

404 errors usually happen when a user tries to reach a page but can’t. One of the leading causes of this could be the URL is wrong, or the website was moved or deleted.

Search engines don’t punish websites for this, but it does annoy users. Running into 404 errors is highly frustrating, and it triggers users to go elsewhere for a faster and more efficient solution.

15. Choose the right color

Here is one of the most important web design tips for color. It’s more important to focus on colors that compliment your website’s overall design and tone.

Align your color scheme with your branding—look at your logo and base your color scheme there. Your brand colors will help you determine which colors work well with your brand image.

16. Navigation shouldn’t be difficult

The key to retaining visitors is optimizing your website navigation. If your website’s navigation is confusing, then there is a higher chance that your visitors will give up and look for what they need somewhere else.

17. Be careful with social media icons

Placing your social media icons at the top of your website is not the best idea. It can distract and veer potential customers away from your website.

To increase your conversions, place your social media icons at the bottom.

18. Content versatility is a must

Fill your page with a variety of helpful content. For example, talk about how your business started, the benefits they’ll get when they avail your services, and showcase your clients and how they benefitted from working with you.

19. Your business website is not a personal blog

Never fill your pages with blocks of text—nobody has time to read all of that.

Your website page is not a blog post. Long paragraphs do not align with digital content best practices. Instead, try to tell your brand and products story in just a few sentences. Using a few words is even better.

20. Jargons are not necessary

When something is difficult to read, visitors unconsciously find it highly time-consuming. Therefore, the easier the sentences are to understand, the more successful your website.

21. Include your client testimonials

Including testimonials on your website shows visitors just how much people love your services or product. Let the kind words of your clients win over new ones!

22. Invest in page speed improvements

Optimizing your website’s page load speed will drastically improve the user experience. The faster your page loads, the more enjoyable and convenient your site is to visitors. Not only that, but you will also have a better chance of ranking highly in search results.

23. A bit of whitespace wouldn’t hurt

Some websites that contain lots of information are usually tightly packed and can make the page overwhelming for a user to read. Adding a bit of white space to your content can help user readability.

24. Yes, the font you choose is a big deal

Not a lot of people know this, but fonts command attention. It works as the visual interpretation of the brand’s voice.

If you choose a font, make sure it compliments your overall design. The font should pair with your color scheme, graphics, and images and strengthen the overall tone of your website.

25. Test and continue to improve your website

Like we said earlier, no website is perfect. Unfortunately, many business owners overlook the importance of a good website for their business. Using this design guide to create an attractive and functional website will help you entice your visitors to stick around.

Once you make a website draft, test it as often as possible. Don’t forget to ensure that it’s continually updated with the latest trends as it grows.

The Bottom Line

Website design is one of the most underrated marketing tools there is today. Therefore, you must find a reliable company specializing in mobile-first web design.

The design of your business website impacts your conversions and credibility. If you want your website to perform well for years to come, optimizing it for the latest trends and user expectations is essential. We are here to help.

Do You Need to Improve Your Website?

Do you need to improve your website or user experience and increase conversions? Our team of WordPress experts will be happy to help you with this. But, first, look at our portfolio and read our case studies.

Then, if you believe we are a good fit for your business web design needs, let’s talk! We offer a full range of consulting and design solutions for businesses and product brands.

If you are unsure how website improvements support your business objectives, let’s talk! Our team will listen to your concerns, evaluate your needs, and develop a list of things you need to do to improve your website.

Are You Providing a Great User Experience?

Are you working on your website? If so, has it improved your overall user experience and boosted conversions? If not, what prevents you from improving your website? Do you have any other web design tips for increasing conversions?

Please leave your comments below so our audience can benefit and grab our feed so you don’t miss our next post! And help your audience with their WordPress website by sharing these web design tips with them!

Thank you! We appreciate your help to end bad business websites, one pixel at a time!

By PixoLabo
Not Your Average WordPress Web Design Agency
@pixolabo