How Can I Make My Website More Effective?

Remember when the lockdowns happened? At the time, this forced a lot of business to look at their website and view it as a bigger asset than maybe they did previously. The ability to continue to sell and operate online became vitally important for every business. You might be asking yourself, is my website working for my business? Is it effective and can my customers navigate it easily? There are so many ways to optimise your website and make it more effective. Here are a few ideas to help boost your website.

Get your website found.

Use keywords that relate to your business throughout your site, especially in your main page title headings. This will help your website rank better in google search. This will ultimately get your website seen by customers who are looking for your products or services. Search Engine Optimisation is a whole art form in and of itself. If you want to dive deep or get a better over of here you can read our Search Engine Optimisation post or Neil Patel runs a pretty amazing blog with some great resources, a good place to start is with this article “SEO Made Simple“.

What is your main ‘call to action’?

Once potential customers have found your site, you will want them to take action. Giving them a clear ‘call to action’ is the best way to make this happen. “contact us” “Shop Now” “Buy Now” “Learn More” are all great examples of call to actions. Think about the products and services you offer and help make your customer flow through the process to help them decide their next action. The ‘call to action’ buttons you use on your site will help with this process.

Keeping it simple.

Help visitors navigate your website and find what they looking for by keeping it simple. Limit the site to a few pages, E.g. Home, Services About and Contact. Using one or two easy to read fonts and limiting your colour palette are a few simple tips to follow to help you achieve a professional, simple looking website.

The power of headings.

Use headings to show structure and introduce people to what the page is about. Establishing good headings help visitors navigate your site and make sense of the information. Headings also establish the level of importance of information, hierarchy through their size and weight. This plays a massive part in the consistency of the page layout. If you are going to use a H3 as a sub headings, then use it as a subheading for every sub heading through out the site.

Use great photography.

Another way to make your site look the part is by using great photography that showcases your products and services. Even if you don’t have a DSLR camera, a phone cameras is a pretty great alternative. There are tones of great youtube videos on product photography, and here is one to help you out. Simple Product Photography Using a Smartphone, Natural Light and A4 Sheets of Paper.

Be consistent throughout your website.

The Final and maybe one of the most important things that make up a good looking website is consistency. Establishing your headings and the hierarchy of them is important for constancy. Also keep in mind things like your typeface choice, fonts, colours, image sizes and button sizes. When creating your site or tidying up your existing site, start by perfecting one page before moving on with the next so you can establishing these things and then translate them to the rest of the site. If you have a page for each of your products or services then keep the page layout the same or similar for all of those page layouts.

Wrap Up

Following these tips can help you take your website up a level and improve the look and usability of your website. If you are feeling overwhelmed take a step back and think about the core of your business and ask yourself, what is the main thing you want your site to communicate? Try focus on that rather than all the extra things, you can always add them in later.

If you need help or assistance with updating your website or if you want an overhaul, please feel free to contact us or read up on our Website Design service.

Further Reading

Here are a couple of other articles that may interest you.

• 7 ways to build authenticity and credibility in your website.
• Why Website Maintenance is Key to a Successful Website.
• 10 benefits of having a Google My Business listing.