Of course we know that we can’t create websites for all businesses and organisations across Wales, many will find other great website designers while some will also make their own websites. What we can do is offer some of our top tips for great website design to help you out!
- Have a clear plan in place BEFORE you start. This includes your “page structure” and content planning – without a good plan at the start, it’ll be hard to get the website finished and launched. You’ll also find for larger websites, without a good structure to begin with, the navigation will be difficult and confusing for visitors.
- Your website HAS to compliment your brand! If you haven’t got branding in place, it’ll be hard to get the website and your other marketing materials looking seamless together. With a brand, make sure the website follows the same colours and fonts, as well as other guidelines that you might have in place (for example, how text is used over images).
- Include sharing on social media buttons – this can be on each page or if you have a blog, at the bottom of each blog. This gives visitors a great chance to share your content to their friends on a range of social media platforms.
- Every page needs a purpose, and the easiest way to define a purpose is to create a call to action. For example, a hotel might want to add an easy “book online” button on the pages relevant to accommodation, or “enquire about availability” for pages on conference room hire. Make it easy for visitors to find what they need, and then make that final step of getting in touch or booking straight away. We would always recommend a phone and email link in your header and footer of every single page, and make sure that they are linked up and not just empty text!
- Create beautiful home pages. Yes, beautiful! Visitors will expect roughly 4-5 sections so don’t avoid a home page design which means they need to scroll, it’s almost an automatic reaction to landing on a website these days. Make the home page impactful, with plenty of navigation options for visitors to travel within your website.
- Your website has to be mobile and tablet responsive – if it isn’t, not only are you losing customers who do find you, but you’re also not ranking on search engines on these devices. Quite simply, you have to have a responsive website, but don’t let anyone charge you extra for it.
- Don’t clutter your design – websites in 2018 are clean/white, easy to navigate and clutter free. Keep this in mind when designing your website, and make sure the content you want visitors to find is easy to do so.
- Sweat the small stuff – we pride ourselves at Gwe Cambrian Web for sweating the small stuff when it comes to website design, and you should too. Make sure that all phone numbers and email addresses are linked up (especially useful to those using tablets and mobiles on your site), get the alignment perfect for those images and sliders and make sure you have continuity with your font types and sizes throughout the website. So many great looking websites fall at the final hurdle, when email addresses aren’t clickable or images are slightly skewed.