8 CRUCIAL TIPS THAT CAN MAKE YOUR WEB DESIGN EXPERIENCE A GREAT ONE
1. Make WordPress Your Base Website Platform.
WordPress is used by 43% of all sites on the internet because it’s a robust and versatile platform for both business and personal websites. When you build in WordPress (via your own hosting account as noted in tip #3), you own your site outright. You don’t own your site when you use a subscription-based platform like Wix — meaning, if you want to leave, you can’t take your site with you. It’s best to own your website so you can do what you want with it anytime you want. WordPress also allows you to add plugins galore and build as many pages as you like. WordPress really is top of the game.
2. Buy and Own Your Own Domain Name.
Make sure you buy and own your own domain name. That way you have sole ownership of it for years to come, and if you want to sell it, you have the right to do so whenever you please. When choosing a domain name to represent your online identity, it needs to be relevant to your business or personal brand, and easy for your audience to remember. The domain names that are most memorable are often the most successful.
3. Pay for Your Own Web Hosting Account.
Along the lines of tip #1, make sure you have your own web hosting account so that you have total control and ownership of your site. If you build your site with companies like Wix or allow someone else to host your site for you then, basically, you’ll never really own your website. If you stop paying for any reason, you no longer have a working website. Two great web hosting companies to consider are A2 Hosting (what we personally use and prefer) and SiteGround.
4. Ensure that You Own Your Website Content Outright.
Make sure your web designer does not own your site. Legally, when a designer builds a site, they can own some or all the rights to it because they are the designer of the work. So, when the site is done, your designer should legally release it to you once you pay for their work in full. And make sure you get the release in writing. Most Work for Hire agreements should cover this, but if you don’t have such an agreement, make sure your designer puts it in writing that they release all rights to you. This one can get a bit tricky so you might want to check with a company like Rocket Lawyer or an IP attorney.
5. Make Sure You Have Superb 24/7/365 Tech Support
You also want to arrange ongoing personalized support from your web designer if possible. If they build your site and then disappear, that’s not good. Now, if you have your own web hosting account and had your site built in WordPress, you’re in good shape to proceed with another designer. However, your site will always be a work in progress as you add or change things, so ideally, you want your design person to be around for a while to help you whenever you need it.
Plus, ideally, they should be doing ongoing web maintenance for you, which typically incurs a reasonable monthly fee, to ensure your site stays well-functioning and up to date. Finally, make sure your web hosting company also provides superb support so that if you ever get stuck, tech support is there to help you right away. A2 Hosting offers outstanding customer support, which is one of the reasons we use them.
6. Properly Vet Your Web Designer — Review Their Work and Social Proof.
Make sure your designer has been in business for a few years and look to see if they have good client testimonials. See if there are any bad reviews of them floating around the web. Also, thoroughly review their work samples to ensure they can provide the quality you’re looking for. Be careful if you choose someone on Fiverr. Yes, there are great, affordable designers in countries outside your own that you may choose to work with. However, keep in mind time zone differences and potential communication challenges. Ideally, your designer should be proficient in English or your native language.
7. If Possible, Hire a Web Designer Who is Also a Graphic Designer.
You want your website to be unique and stand out rather than look like a cookie-cutter template. That’s why it can be extremely beneficial to hire a web designer that’s also a skilled graphic artist. That way they can add that custom touch to your site and not just throw in some basic images or graphics from a stock image site. Not everyone who is a web designer is also a graphic artist, so you might have to look around and even pay a bit more for that kind of service. However, the finished product should be well worth it. If a web designer says they are also a graphic artist, ask them to show you their work samples.
8. Make Sure there’s Good Communication and Good Feelings All Around.
Since you’re going to be working closely with your web designer, make sure there is pleasant, respectful and professional communication with them. Again, ideally, they should speak English (or your native language if not English) well so it’s always easy to communicate. And they should communicate frequently and assure you they will be there when you need them in a timely manner. This is essential, especially if you’re running an ecommerce site. Getting back to you days or a week later is not acceptable. Be upfront and ask what their availability will be during the build phase and once your site is live, and then pay attention to how they communicate with you (and how frequently).
BONUS TIPS! HERE ARE SOME MORE IMPORTANT QUICK MUST-DO TIPS TO CHECK OFF YOUR LIST:
Carefully Choose Your Website Colors
Try to keep it to three colors max. You can use free web design color matchers to help you. These colors should match your brand colors and align with your existing marketing materials.
Pick the Right Fonts (typefaces)
Keep it simple: one font for headings and one font for body copy. Always go for “clear” instead of “cute.” Use fonts that are mainstream, like Adobe and Google fonts.
Focus on Branding
In addition to making sure your website colors match your logo and brand colors, also make sure the voice, tone and style of your written content and your images/media are on-brand.
Create and Implement Favicons
Use your brand colors on these also. These graphic circles that show up next to your site’s name/URL in web browsers search add a unique, custom feel that can help you stand out online.
Link to Your Social Media Profiles
Add your social media icons in your site’s footer and/or navigation bar (and perhaps elsewhere in your site) to drive visitors to follow you on social media.
Set the Copyright Date and Copyright Owner’s Name (yours or your company’s)
Add this in your site’s footer alongside other important info, e.g., Privacy Policy, Terms, Disclaimer and “Website designed by (name).”
Proofread, Spell Check, and Edit Thoroughly
Typos happen, but too many can make you look sloppy and untrustworthy. Better not to have any if possible.
Test Your Site’s Functionality Frequently
Make sure your site loads properly on the most popular browsers: Chrome, Firefox and Explorer, and check to see that everything is functioning properly. Sometimes software updates can throw things off a bit.
Make Sure You Include a Contact Us Page
If people want to contact you, they need to have a place to do so easily.If they can’t contact you, you’ll never know what opportunity you missed.
Optimize All of Your Images
Large images slow page load times, so optimizing them is key. You can either do this yourself with something like Photoshiop or install a plugin that will optimize all uploaded images for you.
8 COMMON MISTAKES TO AVOID IN DESIGNING A GREAT WEBSITE
1. Brand Inconsistency
Brand consistency is hands down the most critical part of your website design. Always make sure website content (written and visual) aligns with and properly reflects your brand throughout your entire site and on all your social media accounts also. Your brand represents your unique value in the world, and your site should be a place for it to really shine and work for you.
2. Confusing Website Menu Structure
Confusing or unclear navigation is one of the biggest mistakes to avoid when building a website. If links are hard to find, and buttons are not visible, your visitors will go through your website in circles and are more likely to bounce away. Navigation is simple, so don’t overcomplicate it. A few core pages (Home, About Us, Services, Product Gallery, Blog, Contact Us) should be sufficient. Or if your site’s content is very simple (say you don’t need a blog or gallery) you may be able to put everything on a single page.
3. Cluttered Page Designs
As there is so much content online, website visitors have tiny attention spans and little-to-no patience. If the first thing they see when they visit your website is a cluttered homepage, they’ll likely bounce away before you can show your value. It’s critical your pages have a clean, clear layout and design with lots of whitespace to best showcase your content and brand.
4. Inadequate Focus on SEO
While building a website, many people forget the importance of search engine optimization (SEO). SEO is the process of making your website more prominent in search engine results. When a search engine crawls your website’s content, it ranks everything to determine where it should place your site in their search engine results. If you don’t SEO your site, it will be buried by other websites that are better optimized for search engines. SEO is a powerful way to drive traffic to your site.
5. Slow Load Times
Having slow servers means that your website’s load time will be negatively impacted. It’s been reported that, on average, a potential prospect will wait for a website to load for just four seconds before “bouncing” away. Choose a highly reputable and well-reviewed web hosting company like A2 Hosting or SiteGround to ensure fast load times.
6. No Mobile Optimization / Responsiveness
About 90% of global internet users access the internet with their mobile devices. Ensuring your site is mobile-optimized is about more than just choosing a mobile-friendly template. You also need to think about how the layout of your website translates to mobile so that it provides users with a seamless experience regardless of the device they use to access your site. It’s critical to design your site to ensure it is responsive and looks great across all devices: desktop, tablet, and phone.
7. Forgetting to Add Social Media Links and Share Buttons
Adding your social media links to your site can help you gain more social media followers. And adding social media sharing buttons to your site can help increase your traffic. If you use WordPress, there are lots of great plugins that make this easy.
8. Missing or Weak Calls to Action (CTAs)
If you want someone to sign up to receive emails from you, share your content, contact you, or take any kind of action, you need to integrate clear call-to-action (CTA) buttons and text throughout your website. Make sure your all-important CTAs stand out by using bold colors and conversion copywriting principles (e.g., speak to your audience’s needs and goals and the benefits you can provide them).
SHOULD YOU USE WORDPRESS OR A SUBSCRIPTION-BASED WEBSITE PLATFORM?
Whether you are tech savvy or technophobic, or plan to build your own site or hire a designer to build it for you, there’s a website builder that meets your needs.
Here are Six Popular Website Platforms/Builders to Consider:
- WordPress — No surprise this is our #1 pick. In addition to what we already shared, we love WordPress because, in our experience, it’s hands down the best builder for content management, overall design quality, flexible and robust functionality, and ease of use. And again, once you build your site you own and control it, which can be very beneficial as your business grows.
That said, not everyone wants or needs this level of functionality and control and are happy using subscription-based website builders instead. Following are best ones we’re aware of — but remember, if you ever decide to leave any of these platforms, you can’t take your site with you and will have to start over from scratch. - Squarespace — Squarespace covers many website use cases and supports both native and third-party integrations.
- Bigcommerce — This leading ecommerce builder enables extreme scalability for online stores. Compared to other website builders, Bigcommerce provides more built-in sales tools.
- Weebly — Best for beginners, Weebly is easy to use and great for beginners, but rather limited.
- Wix.com — It’s easy to create a professional-looking website with Wix. Its easy-to-use drag-and-drop editing feature can help most users accomplish what they need.
- Shopify — Shopify is one of the best and most popular ecommerce website builders, but that doesn’t mean it’s the ideal platform for you. (Hint: the WordPress-compatible ecommerce platform Ecwid is just as good if not better in our opinion.)
So, Which is Best for You — WordPress or a Pay-As-You Go Subscription-Based Builder?
If you’re a novice who wants to build your own site vs. pay a web designer to build a WordPress site for you from scratch, then a subscription-based, all-in-one website builder and hosting service like items #2 – 5 could be the ticket. The ease of their drag-and-drop editors is superb, and their templates can help you create a professional-looking website for a low price.
However, we can’t stress this enough: a pay-as-you-go, subscription-based website platform will own your website — not you. Meaning, you can’t take your site with you if you ever decide to leave and will have to start from scratch elsewhere. For many, this can be a huge disadvantage — so much so they choose to build a self-hosted (via a web hosting provider) WordPress site instead.
For businesses and individuals who want to control and manage their websites outright, WordPress remains the best content management system (CMS) in the world, in our opinion.
WordPress is loved by professional web designers and beginners alike because it’s easy to use and flexible enough to let you start simple and yet accomplish much more as your business grows. Again, 43% of all websites worldwide are built with WordPress for good reason. It must be amazing for so many people and businesses to be using it. We develop all our clients’ websites on WordPress and absolutely love it!
We hope these tips will help you understand and choose the best way to approach your new website build or upgrade. Let us know if we can help you in any way. It would be our sincere joy to be of service to you or your business.
Happy website building! Let us know if we can help you.
—The Team at Light Now Media
