12 Must-Know Web Design Tips for Your Company

Your website: it’s the most important way to establish your digital presence and generate leads. 

Do you know how to design a website that’s both effective and beautiful?

If you don’t, no worries – At EB pearls, we’re here to help you learn about what makes the best websites stand out. We’ve created a list of the 12 must-know web design tips for your company.

And if you’re already familiar with the world of web design, this list is a great way to brush up on your skills.

Let’s get designing!

A common blunder in designing a website stems from the false belief the more intricate your web design is, the more knowledgeable you look.

But the opposite is true. Keeping your design simple and successfully placing emphasis on one focal point shows a lot more about web design skills than busy color schemes and an array of displays on each page.

Stick to a white background for your base. Use a neutral solid color to create emphasis and contrast. Choose one accent color (can you guess ours) to use for call to action buttons or to add interest to more static elements of your page.

Mobile phones are becoming the device of choice for conducting internet searches. Information from Google reveals that 77% of mobile searches are made at home when computers are likely to be present.

It’s more important than ever for your site to be mobile-responsive. Regardless of the screen your visitors use, they should be able to navigate easily.

Your copy needs to have two elements to be successful. First, it needs to be useful. Second, it needs to be visually appealing.

Copy that is is useful provides information to readers that they couldn’t get anywhere else. You achieve this by applying your exclusive knowledge or explaining information in a new way.

Visually appealing text will make your website more usable. 

It will be written in a legible font. Use fonts that contrast against the background for the best reading experience.

Most importantly, space out your text. Website visitors typically scan a page instead of reading through every word, so readers will have difficulty sifting through long paragraphs.

Keep paragraphs only a few sentences long. For added emphasis, use individual sentences in stand-alone paragraphs.

The images on your website will be one of the first things that viewers notice. Take the time to upload images that reflect your brand and do your best to avoid cliche stock images.

When taking photos for your website, aim to create photos that use similar colors and lighting throughout.

You’ll be able to use photos to tell a story without having to use as much text, streamlining your design and elevating your website’s look.

Even the best-designed websites will occasionally experience errors. And there’s nothing more jarring for a website user to go from seeing your well-crafted products page to clicking a “learn more” button that takes them to a dull screen with “404” in unfriendly letters.

Include creative error and 404 pages in your website design should a customer end up in an unexpected spot. Include a link that guides the user back to your website. For instance, take a look at TripAdvisor’s 404 page.

You can even use humor on your 404 page to lighten the mood of a frustrated customer. As long as you keep your messaging and color palettes the same as the rest of your website, even a 404 page is a way to establish your brand identity.

Speaking of your brand identity, your website is the ideal place to display everything that makes your business unique.

On a basic level, your website should display its logo in the top left corner of every web page and the footer. The color scheme should complement the logo and be the same throughout every single page.

For a more nuanced feel, take time to test out different fonts that you think best represent your brand. You’ll want to use the same font and font size throughout your website, as long as it’s size 16 or larger.

Consider what you want your font to say about your branding messaging. Serif fonts are seen as more classy and refined, while sans-serif fonts are viewed as modern and bold.

Great fonts for modern websites include Archivo Black + Judson, Archivo + Open Sans, and Montserrat + Lora.

Web design trends come and go, but one of the longstanding web design tips for creating a timeless company website is to fill your home page with useful information.

For instance, the EB Pearls homepage includes all of the following information.

With just a scroll of our homepage, visitors will be able to answer many of the questions they have about who we are and what we do.

If they have further questions, we link relevant pages throughout our home page.

In HTML web design, you have access to 6 header tags. Header tags act as titles and dividers for content on your page. Using them correctly will make your design more effective and your web page search engine-friendly.

Every website should have an H1 tag and an H2 tag. 

H1 tags act as the title of the entire page. They signal to search engines what that page is about and classify the page within your website. It is the key description of your page.

H2 tags act as the subtitle of your page. They give more information on the specific content of your page and answer the question of what users can expect to learn on that page.

H3, H4, H5, and H6 are more tags that appear on a website to break down information further. While you don’t need these on a webpage, they can make longer pages easier to digest.

Optimize header tags by following the hierarchy above. This becomes especially important concerning your H1 tags.

You may want to hide your H1 title header at the top of a webpage because you prefer a sleeker look. Instead, you may wish to display a full-size image or custom graphic as the first thing that viewers see.

If you properly hide your H1 header – ideally, with the help of a web design team – you won’t experience any problems.

However, hiding the H1 head or otherwise changing the header hierarchy on your website will cause a host of technical problems that expose your sight to security breaches or even hide you from search engine results pages.

Keep users on your website by making their experience as effortless as possible. 

Your load speed can make or break your website.

Users expect information to load almost instantly. If your website can’t keep up, they’ll have no problem leaving your site.

A website that loads within two seconds will have much lower bounce rates than even one that loads within three seconds.

This means that loading times are also crucial to your SEO strategy. Users who exit your website because it’s taking too long signal to search engines that your site isn’t a valuable source of information.

Pop-ups can be a great way to incorporate your marketing strategy into your website. A pop-up offering a new discount to first-time visitors, for instance, can be a great way to convert unknowns into leads.

But users who are already familiar with your website or are looking for a particular service or product won’t want to be greeted with a pop-up within the first second of visiting your site.

Be strategic about the pop-ups you use by considering how the user will interpret them. Segment users to give them the most applicable pop-ups for their consumer journey.

When in doubt, choose the safe route of putting your announcements or marketing adverts on the right side of a blog page or within the banner at the top of a page.

A call to action on your website is a specific instruction for users that tells them the course of action they need to take. Without a call to action, an interested user may not know what they should do next.

Creating a call to action at the end of your blog post or after information presented on a static page on your site makes the user experience seamless by reducing the number of steps the user needs to think about. 

Make the call to action specific to direct viewers to certain goals. If you want to increase your email subscribers, your call to action should say “sign up for our email list.” If you want users to watch your demo video, tell them to do just that.

Show potential leads that you deliver by showcasing examples of your work.

Whether you’re displaying a video gallery of how to use your products or a list of case studies that identify the ROI for your services, providing examples of what you’ve accomplished before will instill trust in future clients and may even give them ideas of how they’ll ask your business to do.

If you have client reviews, pairing them with case studies or virtual demonstrations will add even more impact.

Integrate text, images, and video, for a comprehensive user experience. Make sure to update your work frequently to stay up-to-date with recent projects.

Web design isn’t a one-time ordeal. It takes many trials to determine the final look and structure of your website.

Test your website constantly before you decided on the final look. This includes getting feedback, exploring different themes, and test-driving different functions to make sure everything is running smoothly.

Don’t be happy with the status quo. Sure, three seconds may be an acceptable amount of time for a page to load, but why not get it down to one second?

Once your website is complete, analytic tools like Google Analytics can tell you how effective your design is in the long run by telling you information about your visitors and how they typically interact with your site.

The best way to determine how your design impacts others involves asking them. And while getting input from family and friends can be a great part of your design process, the most effective information will come from impartial sources.

Dedicate time and resources during your web design process to generate unbiased feedback from strangers. A web design company will be able to help you with this.

Feedback gives you a few different sources of information: first, you’ll learn wh what viewers think of your website design. Gather as much input about your web design as possible – studies show that 94% of website visitors will not come back to a poorly designed website.

Next, an impartial group can test out the functionality of your website.

How easy is it to make a purchase? Are visitors motivated to sign up for your email list after reading a blog post? You’ll learn all of this and more by observing the experiences of an unattached party.

Make the most out of these 12 web design tips by collaborating with a professional web design team. 

At EB Pearls, our team of digital experts has been rated #1 for web design in Australia in the 2020/21 year by Clutch. We’ve created over 3400 websites for top businesses and brands.

See how we can transform your business by reimagining your online presence. Book your free consultation for web services.