For all businesses, whether yours is located in a mall or is purely online, a professional looking website is not a luxury, but a necessity. Your business needs a quality website to give your company credibility, enhance your brand image, and impart the knowledge to your visitors that you offer great products or services.
Getting the basics right
There are several elements to consider when designing your business website. You need to first define the purpose of your website. This means working out whether you intend it to be a source of information regarding your company, a catalog of the products or services you offer, or a place for your customers to interact, with both you and other users. Of course, you might also want your website to do all three of these things.
The second element you need to consider is your target audience. This is important because to make your website appear professional and attract customers, you must think like your customers. You have to understand what they want or need to know about your company, what it does, and how it does it. Only when you have this information can you design a website that answers and provides solutions for all your customers’ needs.
The appearance of your website is just as important as the content. What is vital is that your website reflects your brand, meaning that if you already have a logo that appears on your letterhead and other stationery, it needs to be replicated across your site to consolidate the image in your customers’ minds. If you are designing your own website, there are some principles to remember. Avoid using more than three colors, as too many will overwhelm the eyes of your visitors. The same goes for fonts. Try to stick to just the one for your entire site’s text. If you want to use more than one font, ensure there is a good reason for doing so, such as identifying a different type of information or heading. Finally, ensure there is plenty of white space on each page of your site so that it does not appear cluttered.
As there is so much to consider when designing a website, it can be a good idea to have it professionally designed. A professional website design company will have a far better idea of how to utilize images and video, such as Stock Video Footage, to improve the look and usability of your site. Videos in particular are a great choice for websites, as users have been shown to engage with video content that highlights certain services better than simply reading text. It is alleged that search engines also love video content and such content could, therefore, improve your site’s ranking.
Your website is effectively your shop front, and just as a store window display attempts to attract the attention of passers-by on the street, your site needs to be just as enticing and attractive to convince visitors to not only buy your products or hire your services on one occasion, but to return again and again.