Website Design [blog]

Many new business owners starting on the path to getting a website built want everything on their website – including the latest and greatest features they see on other websites.

Before jetting off to get a quote, you need to think a little about what you are actually asking for.

Before you even consider asking for those “must have” features, consider the following:

• Will it help you convert visitors to sales?
• Am I only doing because everyone else has it?
• Does my direct competitors have similar features and does it benefit them?
• Do you go to their website just for that feature or features?

If you can answer “NO” to any of those questions, then you seriously need to consider the return on investment you are looking to get from the feature.

An Example

For an example, will having an online booking feature really mean you can convert your visitors to actionable sales?

Will you make enough sales through the system to justify the development time and the cost of the feature? Including such a feature in your quote can often inflate the price quoted by web design agencies (unless they have built a system previously and can re-use that system with some modifications).

You will have to also look at how they affect your business in other ways. For example, taking the booking feature above, you will need to remember to update the appointments you take in person and add them to the system , will you remember each and every time – and you need to consider which ones takes precedent in such a case. Will you honour the in person booking and attempt to reschedule the website booking?

You will also need to consider the time spent updating the system and checking the system as well and how will it integrate with what you are currently doing.

If you can clearly justify a feature for your website and the corresponding price, then you’ve certainly made a good business case for the feature and can justify the expense so by all means. You will also be better prepared when you start to flesh out what you want from the new feature – which will in turn help whomever you get the do the work generate an accurate quote.

Your website is often the first thing a new prospect or potential client will see of your organisation – and you need your web design to have the impact you desire in your clients so that you can, eventually get the sales leads you want.

This much is true of any website, but making sure you have the right kind of impact is crucial.

Do you want your website to be loud and brisk whilst your business prefers quiet and likes to build relationships with the customer? All these things need to be considered before you can nail down your design with any designer.

Fortunately, we are now in a golden era of the website, and we have many tools in our collective toolkits to craft the ultimate experience for your customers.

However, even with all these tools, there are few things to bear in mind.

Simplicity & Minimalism

Simplicity is golden at the moment – otherwise you hamper any marketing messages your website may be designed to convey or to drive away the planned conversions because your visitors will be confused. Ever wandered onto a website and found that the website is offering so much more than the information you are after and have simply got lost on their website? Well with simplicity on your side, that risk is reduced.

However, this does mean you must be selective with what you want your website to do – and perhaps remove or at least de-clutter the other competing messages you are attempting to get across.

Not only this, but they also lead onto the fact that simplistic websites are also easier to adapt to be “responsive” which means that your website will be able to reach a wider audience by adapting itself to whatever device the user happens to be using at the time.

Clarity in All Things

Just as you must be clear with what to get across, your website must also be clear to your visitors. This includes all the visual elements of your website, from text through to the images you put on there. After all, if you putting images of cars on your website and you’re a delivery company, than this may cause some confusion which will result in you loosing potential leads.

The written text itself should be clear and free from errors, as well the visual look of the text must be easy to read, preferably black or a very dark colour against white or a very light colour as well as being large enough to be read comfortably.

The images must also be clear and representative, as they are often the focus points of your visitor’s attention, however, fleeting that may be. You don’t want filler images either, otherwise you aren’t making the most effective use of every inch of your website.

The ideal image is one that portrays a story or message and preferably include captions for your images as they help give you some context for the image (and studies show they are often read more than the body text on websites).

Other Content

When you are getting your website created, it may appear to be good practice to include everything on the website, but this isn’t always the case. The main purpose of the website should be to get you more customers and anything that detracts from that is probably better being left out.