As a business owner, it is important to revisit the overall look and feel of each professional website and landing page on a regular basis. This will ensure that business owners stay up-to-date with the most modern trends in website and graphic design, as well as ensure that their current website accurately provides the information their clients are searching for online. Below are just a few thoughts business owners must take into consideration when improving their website and graphic design to be more attractive.
Social Sharing Made Easy
Adding social media buttons to websites has long been standard practice. However, according to the experts, to truly make a website more attractive, business owners must consider the design of their social media buttons, as well as the importance of allowing for social sharing of individual products, blog posts, or online videos. Since the logos of the most in-demand social media sites, such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, are easily recognizable, adding buttons throughout a websites provides visitors the ability to share, connect, and further engage with just a few clicks of the mouse or taps of the touchscreen.
3-D Websites, Web Pages and Web Content
The goal of many sites has long been to replicate the look and feel of a magazine, newspaper, or another print material, such as a brochure. The goal thus far has been to achieve a professional website to build consumer trust. While imitating print media has long been an acceptable and popular method of web design, the expectation of delivering information online is now allowing for more creativity. In fact, according to Ilya Pozin writing for Forbes, 3-D web design is taking the internet by storm. While websites and online content must still look professional, to further engage their visitors many are opting for 3-D web design to create a more life-like user experience.
Adaptive vs. Responsive Design
When mobile web browsing first began, many business owners created a mobile version of their site to accommodate users who might be accessing it on their phone. While this provided an online presence, the limitations of mobile web design and user preference for browsing on a desktop computer led to “mobile responsive” web design, which allowed websites to be viewed in full on both desktops and mobile devices by fitting the information on the page onto several standard “frames” designed to fit different screen sizes.
While mobile responsive web design is effective, Mitch Joel, President of Twist Image, suggests taking things one step further. Even if a website is already mobile responsive, consider having it redesigned to be adaptive instead—to accurately adjust the site to fit whatever individual device is accessing it. For example, while the overall layout of a site may look the same when viewed on a desktop, laptop, notebook, or smartphone—mobile websites with adaptive design will make small changes to accurately adjust to the page to fit the device being used to browse the web, no matter what it is. Instead of needing two separately indexed sites, one for desktop and one for mobile, businesses can now rely on one website with adaptive design to meet their needs.
Simplified Layout
While websites are indeed an effective tool for communicating pertinent information, they sometimes deliver too much information and overwhelm their visitors. As a website owner, it is important to put the wants and needs of the website visitor above all else. If a website has too many pages, too many drop-down menus, and an overall feeling of being crowded with too much information, it is likely having the opposite effect.
Websites must not only be informative, but clean and simple. By rethinking web design and page layout, website visitors may have a far more productive visit to the site. Whether a websites is several years old or fairly new, website owners should revisit the look and feel of their site at least once per year.