Whether it’s funneling traffic in from the web, educating users, or converting potential leads, your firm’s website is working overtime as your best advocate. For many users, this may be their first time encountering your business.

3 Principles of Good Web Design

No matter if it’s through a phone, tablet, or desktop, most users are likely to stick with the website that checks off some of the following boxes:

Clean + Clear : Design & Navigation

Acting as the face of your brand, your website should embody a design that is modern, clean, easy to navigate, and inspires confidence. Having a cluttered or outdated design as a first impression can deter users from viewing your website as a credible source and increase the likelihood of them clicking back out to their search for another result. Across all industries, the average bounce rates are as follows: 

  • Desktop: 43%
  • Mobile: 51%
  • Tablet: 45%

The mobile rate comes in at the highest and we can attribute that to websites not being properly optimized for mobile use. This proves why it is equally important to build for all device types. When designing a new website, or making changes to an existing site, you always want to ensure that these changes are being implemented in a way that will translate equally across all device types. While a consistent, up-to-date design will capture their attention, an easy-to-navigate layout on all devices can keep users engaged. It’s also crucial to ensure that your website has a structure to it that makes sense, which is where internal linking can be helpful. Internally linking your website’s architecture has two benefits: it fulfills an SEO best practice and also makes the content accessible – acting as a guide to lead the user around to more relevant information throughout your site. 

Quality Content = Quality Source 

Just as the design is the face of your brand, your website’s content is your voice. Content allows you to welcome users to your website, tell them about who you are, and identify yourself as a quality source and an expert in your field. Having the right kind of content on your website will help to build your credibility online and make a potential lead feel like they’re coming to the right place. 

While rich keyword content is always a critical part of SEO efforts, adding new content and updating the existing content makes your website a constant work in progress and contributes to building more authority online. Building out your offerings pages will help to set your practice apart from others and drive the type of traffic that could possibly convert into business. Adding a blog to your website is a great way to keep the activity going. A blog allows you to do research on hot topics in the industry and write pieces of content that will be engaging and relevant to users, allowing your website to gain a larger audience outside of just your geographical location. 

Prompt Performance

While it’s great to have a website that looks visually appealing and has great content, it won’t be doing much service to you or your users if it doesn’t perform well. 1 in 4 users will likely abandon a website if it doesn’t load in 4 seconds and 46% of users won’t revisit a website if it performs poorly. Having a website that is fully optimized to load pages, content, and images quickly is an important step to factor in. Just as it is deterring to users, Google will also take note of this and it could in turn affect your rankings. Addressing performance issues early on in the process will be a foundational tool to set you up for success. Continually testing your website speed on all device types is a good habit to ensure that any changes you’re making aren’t having a negative impact. 

The Takeaways

There are many different aspects that contribute to a positive user experience on your website. Taking all of these things into consideration can possibly reduce your bounce rate and in turn improve your conversion rate. While not everyone can start from scratch with building a new website, there are always changes and improvements that can be made to an existing website that go a long way in making a difference. 

Monitor Your Metrics

As you are navigating through making changes and additions, your metrics will speak for themselves. The metrics will keep you informed about how users are getting to your website, where they are spending their time, how long they’re browsing, and ultimately if they decide to click to call or submit a form. Knowing how users are interacting with your website can indicate areas that may have room for improvement.