Tips for an Effective Website

Several factors can affect how usable and effective your website is, and of course, it’s ultimately the site users who determine that and not the website owner. You can expect low conversions, less time spent on each page and a high bounce rate if your website just isn’t as useful and informative as it could be.

However, you can make sure you have an effective website and one that is easy to use, relevant and informative and looks good by keeping in mind the following.

Purpose

The different pages of your website should have a clear purpose and fulfil a specific and clearly defined need. Ask yourself what your site visitors are doing – are they wanting to make a transaction, looking for information, or just wanting to be entertained?

Communication

The information on your site should be easy to find and clearly understood, as most users want their information quickly. Bullet points, headlines and sub-headlines can all help, as can making your content concise and well written instead of rambling with too much waffle.

Effective Website

Typefaces

Keep the look of your site streamlined and easy to read by having no more than three typefaces and 3 point sizes. 16 px is ideal as a font size for easy reading, and most users like an easy to read fonts such as Verdana, Arial and other Sans Serif typefaces.

Colours

Use vibrant colours sparingly, such as on the buttons on your pages, to avoid distracting the reader. You can make your website look uncluttered and modern by using plenty of white space, although complementary colours for your background and text can be pleasant, easy on the eye and can create a harmonious and balanced feel.
Images

Connecting with your target audience and positioning and promoting your brand can be accomplished more effectively with well-chosen pictures. Use stock images if you don’t have good quality pictures of your own. Consider enhancing your communication with the use of videos, graphics and infographics.

Navigation

Keep in mind that users should ideally be able to find the page they are looking for in three clicks or less. It’s one way you can help to make your website easy to navigate, along with a logical page hierarchy, clickable buttons.

For sites with a lot of internal pages such as e-commerce websites, “bread crumbs” are also helpful. Bread crumbs are simply links at the top of the page which show the hierarchy or pathway to the current page. A simple example of bread crumbs are: Home > Shop > Shoes > Red Show Product

Grid-Based layouts

Content such as columns, sections and boxes have a more organized and balanced look when you use a grid-based layout on your website, rather than a haphazard and random appearance.

Effective Website

The F Pattern Design

Most of us instinctively look at the top left of the screen, in what is known as the F pattern. You can make your site easier on the eye by having information displayed in order of importance from left to right and from the top of the page to the bottom.

Load Time

Optimising your image size, minifying CSS, JavaScript and HTML can all help to make your pages load more quickly. This is something that Professional Web Solutions will take care of when building your website. The end result is faster loading pages which provide a far better experience for visitors to your site.

Mobile Friendly

Make sure your website is mobile friendly and can be accessed and read on different size screens. The best approach is a responsive website. This is because of the emergence of the many different devices with a range of different screen sizes. A responsive website will adjust to any screen size so the visitors’ experience of your website is not compromised.

Professional Web Solutions can help you to have an effective website, one that retains the reader’s interest and generates more sales. Contact us today for help with making the above tips to become reality.