A website should be more than practical or just convey information. Good looking web sites, with good functionality, usually do better online …
With all the tips and tricks out there to design a good-looking, user-friendly website, it’s somewhat amazing that most websites are designed to be wall-flowers that barely rate a second glance. Luckily, your website layout has nothing to do with genetics and airbrushes! In fact, it doesn’t even take a fortune to make-over a plain website into something that stops them in their tracks. The following tips can help you assess your current website and tackle the issues that prevent it from putting its best face forward.
Look Around At Other Attractive Websites
Before you start rushing around to change code or scramble to hire a savvy web designer, spend some time window shopping on the web. You will find throngs of boring websites, but you’ll also discover sites that intrigue you no matter their content. Keep notes—what elements do you like in certain sites? What design elements get under your skin? After browsing websites who took efforts to be attractive, you’ll happily discover that there are many paths to take to achieve design greatness and many phenomenally different sites that can be termed great from a design point of view.
Scalpel Please – Cut Away Excesses, Add Necessities
Having explored the many ways other websites have achieved their consummate style and sophisticated look, approach your site with a decidedly sharp eye aimed at revision. Before you can add any of the bells and whistles you’ve found, it makes sense to first decide on the elements of your site you want to get rid of. Nobody goes in for a nose job without first assessing what it is about their nose they don’t like. Although the actual design may be exacted all at once, cutting and adding elements as you go, it’s best to have all the technical work mapped out first. Pay particular attention to your homepage, the true face of your site. If it is overly wordy, find novel ways to condense and possibly move unnecessary text to other pages where it is more strategically placed. Decide whether to keep or change your color combination and whether your brand is optimally showcased or not.
Make The Face Of Your Web Site Attractive, Again
Some designers might scoff at a term like pretty, since it’s quite true that beauty is a most subjective thing. Nevertheless, if you’re aiming to be one of the fifty best-designed websites on the internet or named on any best-of lists, there are certainly some beautifying regimens you can prescribe your site. Imagery is one technique web designers use to make the homepage appealing to the eye. In many cases, a single compelling image that unifies the overriding concept of the site or the business is a safe approach. Such images tend to be large and captivating.
On the other hand, sometimes it can be a great idea to let a few images drive the homepage design. A major online jeweler, for example, shows a geometrically interesting slide show of small images of their jewels and the historic and contemporary people who have worn them. In fact, you will find a number of attractive, effective web sites that let their primary images drive the page as well (incorporating these images into graphic links, etc). Successful employment of images runs the gamut—everything from photographs of people and products to eclectic artwork like Manga. A professional designer should be able to work with you to find images that pair perfectly with your products or services.
Post Website Improvement Tweaks
After the web design process and the launch of the new site have taken place, be sure to use a service like Google Analytics to track how your new design is working. Let a tracking program measure what elements of your new site are working best and what elements may still need improvement. Such measures should demonstrate a positive traffic trend. If, however, your beautiful website is still not turning heads the way you hoped, you can move forward into marking campaigns that will drive visitors to your revamped website. Before diving into social media marketing or an expensive advertising campaign, be sure your website, which is ultimately selling what you’ve got, outshines your competitors’ websites and makes every visitor to the page want to spend time checking it out.
