UPDATED: 10 tips on visually optimizing your small business web design

When it comes to website design, there are so many different styles and websites out there, it can be difficult to understand which elements are more important than others. A great website design helps your overall user experience and SEO ranking in search engines like Google. These are the top 10 website design tips that our experts have put together for all businesses to understand what elements are needed on their website.

1. Simplify It

One of our biggest tips for a website design or website redesign and development project is to keep it as simple as possible. There are plenty of ways to stand out on the internet without needing a flashy, bright and complicated website. Less is more and especially with websites.

The more complicated your website is, the harder time visitors are going to have navigating through it. If they have a difficult time navigating through it, they will likely just leave in frustration.

2. Cut down on the clutter

When a searcher or potential customer lands on your website, you want the information to be clear and concise. If they came from an advertisement, make sure the landing page helps complete their customer journey’s final destination. Whether it be filling out a contact us form or finishing their research, cut down the clutter as much as possible.

What is clutter, you ask? Everything from block paragraphs to misaligned background boxes to densely packed images and more. Anything that makes it difficult for the human mind to process information could rightfully be called clutter.

Clutter can single-handedly ruin a website, even if the content contained within is high-quality, sought-after information. You don't want it on your business website.

3. UX design elements

UX design is known as User Experience design in the Denver Web design services industry and it is one of the most important elements of a website’s design. Bad website design is like a bad joke, and bad UX design strategies are the worst dad joke you will ever hear. The kids will never want to listen to another one again!

4. Make use of SEO

SEO and website design Denver go hand-in-hand. This is because every element of the website design and development process also works right alongside the SEO strategies that are implemented to help the website rank in search engines.

A website that loads slowly affects the website’s design, perception and SEO. A website that has ugly URLs hurts the SEO strategy and design. SEO is implemented for search engines, but its content is created for searchers, on the other hand, website design is implemented for searchers but needs to play nicely with search engines.

One affects the other tremendously at the end of the day.

5. Utilize call to actions (CTAs)

One of the most important elements of Denver web design services has nothing to do with website design itself. A Call to Action (CTA) tells searchers exactly what to do next. A common misconception that companies make on their marketing and website strategies is not understanding that consumers need to be told what to do along the customer journey.

If the searcher landed on your website from an advertisement, what is the next step? Should they fill out a form? Where do they go? What happens next? What happens once the form is filled out?

6. Think about loading speed

A fairly big component of SEO deals with loading speeds. Pages that take 10 seconds to load will almost always rank lower than pages that only take two seconds or less to load.

So, what does this have to do with web design? Everything.

The more design elements you have on your website, the longer it's going to take to load. This means making sure that videos and images are compressed to ensure they load just as fast as any other element on the website.

Another element that affects this is code. The larger and bulkier the code within a website is, the slower it will load, and this does affect the overall design and performance of the website. A bulky code will also affect the website on mobile search queries as well as desktop!

7. Be mobile friendly

Over 211 million searchers have utilized their mobile devices while searching for the latest products and/or services! Mobile search has continued to rise in popularity since 2016, and with this in mind, this will be one of the main factors that is taken into consideration when Google releases its latest update in 2021.

A mobile friendly website is a responsive website. This means that the website automatically formats itself to fit on mobile phones and desktops alike. This means that navigation and other elements on the website need to be tested, designed and developed for mobile search queries and desktop alike!

8. Maintain your brand

A brand is the public perception of your business, and a website’s design and development is the very first impression that consumers will make of your business. Whether that be a negative, meaningful or impactful first impression, all of it is critical and website design Denver experts always suggest to keep in mind branding when developing a website and its overall design.

9. Add original images

One of the common themes you'll come across when looking at business websites is the use of stock images. Whether it be infographics, your own stock photos or other images and animations, it is important to utilize your own images.

Whether it be recruiting Denver web design services to help during the website design and development process or hiring a photographer to take your own stock photos, from the website to marketing strategies, images affect it all.

10. Use videos when need be

More and more business websites are using video on their pages, helping to make the user experience a little more interactive. For the most part, this is a good strategy.

However, you should be careful to not use too much video. Having too many videos on a website can not only overwhelm visitors, but it can also slow the website down substantially. In essence, use video sparingly.

Need more website design tips?

In need of more web design tips? Are you looking to hire someone to design your website for you? Here at Denver Media Group, we are here to help you!

Our team has designed and optimized websites for numerous businesses throughout the Denver area. We look forward to doing the same for your business.

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