When you’re a business with an online presence, professional web design is essential.
There are 2 very important rules your business absolutely NEEDS to follow in order for your website to succeed online:
Satisfy the Search Engines – We put this as the first rule for a very good reason. Without satisfying the search engines your company website will NOT get in front of the eyes of your potential customers. Simple as that. Your site may look pretty, but if the search engines don’t like it, your site may as well be on Mars because it will get buried deep in the search results where no one will find it, let alone click through to visit your site.
Satisfy the Website Visitors – A well-designed website meets the needs of its visitors. It tells them right away what they want to know without going off on unnecessary tangents or distracting visitors with unnecessary design elements, all while looking attractive and easy to read and navigate.
Good website development also ensures that there are no glitches that annoy and repel visitors. Some common glitches are broken links, missing images and long webpage load times.
In order to follow the rules and satisfy both the search engines and your website visitors, you need professional web design. Just doing it yourself – or getting your teenaged nephew to do it for you – isn’t going to cut it for a business website.
Why?
Because there are just so many variables. And yes, you can learn the principles for yourself and how to fit them all together in the best possible way. It’s an art as well as a science. But ask yourself one thing:
Do I have the time?
Do you have the time to learn all you need to know about website development as it applies to business websites? Don’t you have enough to do running your business?
But we don’t want to make the design process more mysterious than it really is. Here at Big Blue Sky Internet Marketing we’re all about transparency. So we’ll let you in on it. Let you in on the guiding principles that we – and other companies that offer professional website development – stick to for every project we take on.
The 8 Guiding Principles of Website Design
1. Adhere to the Purpose of the Website - Every website has a purpose, whether it’s to give out free cake recipes, showcase the latest fashion in hats (and sell them), or outline your company’s services and sell those. Having a clear purpose – and sticking with it – is key to good design because it keeps the needs of your website visitors foremost in mind. (Plus, it also satisfies the search engines.)
2. Keep the Design Simple - No one likes complicated. At least not when they’re trying to visit a website.
Complex design elements are distracting, hard on the eyes, and make visitors feel uneasy. That feeling of unease translates into a sense that they’re in the wrong place and cause website visitors to leave asap.
At Big Blue Sky Internet Marketing, we implement 3 factors that guarantee design simplicity:
2. Keep the Design Simple - No one likes complicated. At least not when they’re trying to visit a website.
Complex design elements are distracting, hard on the eyes, and make visitors feel uneasy. That feeling of unease translates into a sense that they’re in the wrong place and cause website visitors to leave asap.
At Big Blue Sky Internet Marketing, we implement 3 factors that guarantee design simplicity:
- Color – Most website designers say to use a maximum of 5 colors. We simplify even farther by limiting the color palette to 3 colors for design elements. We pick a main color, a secondary, and maybe even a third color. That’s it. And we pick complementary colors (for example: blue and orange, like our own website), or analganous colors (for example: blue and green.)
- Text – Most website designers say a maximum of 3 fonts is alright. We use a maximum of 2 fonts, and only fonts that are highly legible and clean-looking.
- Images – Pictures are so important to tell the story of your business. We take this very seriously, working with our clients to give their website visitors the best possible visual representation of what their business is about by making sure that the images we use capture the spirit of our client’s company.
3. Make Navigating Easy - Website navigation should be simple, intuitive and consistent on every page of the website. Visitors need to feel that it makes sense, and that when they use the Nav Bar, it takes them where it’s supposed to.
You’d think this principle would be a cinch to apply. But apparently it isn’t because we see navigation problems with websites all the time. Especially if there is more than one set of navigation bars. Often the different Nav Bars behave differently. And when they do, it’s off-putting for the visitor, which may cause them to leave the website.
4. Authoritative Content - In order to inspire confidence in your website visitors, you need to present them with information that makes it clear to them that you’re knowledgeable about your field of expertise and are able to solve their problem.
But more than that, your website needs to present enough high-quality content to satisfy the search engines.
You see, when the search engine bots visit your website, they check out everything. And what they like most of all is good quality content. Especially in the form of written text. And lots of it.
We know that writing content – paragraphs and paragraphs of it – isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. Frankly, it’s hard work for most people. And most people – and companies – would rather splash a big, colorful picture across their homepage and call it done.
But don’t be like most companies.
Because that won’t cut it for the search engines. And if it doesn’t cut it for the search engines than your website won’t get ranked high enough for your customers to find you when they search for what you’ve got to offer.
If you would like to learn more about the importance of written content, please read Written Text: The Crown Prince of Content here on our blog.
You’d think this principle would be a cinch to apply. But apparently it isn’t because we see navigation problems with websites all the time. Especially if there is more than one set of navigation bars. Often the different Nav Bars behave differently. And when they do, it’s off-putting for the visitor, which may cause them to leave the website.
4. Authoritative Content - In order to inspire confidence in your website visitors, you need to present them with information that makes it clear to them that you’re knowledgeable about your field of expertise and are able to solve their problem.
But more than that, your website needs to present enough high-quality content to satisfy the search engines.
You see, when the search engine bots visit your website, they check out everything. And what they like most of all is good quality content. Especially in the form of written text. And lots of it.
We know that writing content – paragraphs and paragraphs of it – isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. Frankly, it’s hard work for most people. And most people – and companies – would rather splash a big, colorful picture across their homepage and call it done.
But don’t be like most companies.
Because that won’t cut it for the search engines. And if it doesn’t cut it for the search engines than your website won’t get ranked high enough for your customers to find you when they search for what you’ve got to offer.
If you would like to learn more about the importance of written content, please read Written Text: The Crown Prince of Content here on our blog.
5. F-Shaped Reading Pattern - In the western world, the natural reading pattern is from left to right, top to bottom. So you think it would be self-evident to implement this principle for website design.
But again, we see the opposite all the time. People get cute aligning their text to the right instead of the left or putting large pictures to the left and the text to the right, and all sorts of things. We can only guess that these people think they’re being refreshingly original.
But what they’re really being is confusing to their website visitors who are used to reading as they always have, left to right, top to bottom. If website visitors get confused, they will leave and find what they’re looking for elsewhere.
6. Visual Hierarchy - Just a fancy way of saying that large elements – like larger heading text – should come before smaller subhead text and then smaller for the body text.
But visual hierarchy also can be applied subtly to the amount of whitespace on a page, as well as size, color, imagery, contrast, texture and style.
This is the principle that’s probably the most artsy-fartsy. And it’s the principle that’s the hardest to explain in words. And the hardest for most people to grasp because most people aren’t visual thinkers.
For us visual thinkers here at Big Blue Sky Internet Marketing, it’s a cinch. We apply this principle all the time.
But again, we see the opposite all the time. People get cute aligning their text to the right instead of the left or putting large pictures to the left and the text to the right, and all sorts of things. We can only guess that these people think they’re being refreshingly original.
But what they’re really being is confusing to their website visitors who are used to reading as they always have, left to right, top to bottom. If website visitors get confused, they will leave and find what they’re looking for elsewhere.
6. Visual Hierarchy - Just a fancy way of saying that large elements – like larger heading text – should come before smaller subhead text and then smaller for the body text.
But visual hierarchy also can be applied subtly to the amount of whitespace on a page, as well as size, color, imagery, contrast, texture and style.
This is the principle that’s probably the most artsy-fartsy. And it’s the principle that’s the hardest to explain in words. And the hardest for most people to grasp because most people aren’t visual thinkers.
For us visual thinkers here at Big Blue Sky Internet Marketing, it’s a cinch. We apply this principle all the time.
7. Quick Load Time - Even people who don’t get the subtle nuances of the visuals will understand this principle. If your website doesn’t load within 3 seconds, your visitors will leave. Simple as that.
We think that 3-second interval is being too generous.
People expect instant gratification. When a person clicks on a link to a website, that website better be up and ready to give that person what they want immediately – if not sooner!
At Big Blue Sky Internet Marketing we strive for a 2-second or less load time.
8. Multiple Device Compatibility - As you’re aware, people don’t just go online on their desktop computers. They search the web on their phones, tablets and whatever other mobile devices they have – or will have in the future.
So it’s super-important that your website looks, feels and behaves well across all devices. Otherwise, your website visitors will leave.
Here at Big Blue Sky Internet Marketing we only use fully responsive layouts so that your website will adjust to the different screens across all possible devices.
We think that 3-second interval is being too generous.
People expect instant gratification. When a person clicks on a link to a website, that website better be up and ready to give that person what they want immediately – if not sooner!
At Big Blue Sky Internet Marketing we strive for a 2-second or less load time.
8. Multiple Device Compatibility - As you’re aware, people don’t just go online on their desktop computers. They search the web on their phones, tablets and whatever other mobile devices they have – or will have in the future.
So it’s super-important that your website looks, feels and behaves well across all devices. Otherwise, your website visitors will leave.
Here at Big Blue Sky Internet Marketing we only use fully responsive layouts so that your website will adjust to the different screens across all possible devices.
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