Creating your perfect user friendly website today is easier than ever before. Getting started is the hardest part due to the never-ending choice of different; web hosting providers, website builders and programming languages for you to select from.
Selecting the correct service can present major headaches for clients new to building websites. This article aims to reduce confusion by teaching industry practices such as implementing a responsive design to create professional websites. Once you have created your professional website you need to boost search results. This article covers topics such as targeted content which can increase search engine rankings.
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Different Website Types
The internet has many different unique websites which fall into categories. It is important to understand what purpose you are creating your website for and what category it falls into. This gives you a better idea of how to structure your website. The most common website categories include: Blogs, E-commerce, Search Engine and Social Media.
Blogs: Blog websites tend to focus on specific niches. They publish targeted content aimed towards their specific niche to drive traffic towards the site. An example would be a fitness blog writing articles such as “Top ten ways to get ripped” or “Twelve diet tips you need”. These articles are good as they focus on the niche of fitness and are more likely to appear in search results. A bad example would be a fitness blog writing articles like “How to be lazy” or “Ten ways to stay in bed”.
Brochure: Brochure websites contain target content specific to their niche. Commonly created using one webpage these websites act as an online business card for the company. When creating a brochure, it is vital to create a professional design with important content shown first to maximise conversions.
E-commerce: E-commerce websites focus on selling their products or services to consumers for profit. Driving traffic to e-stores can prove difficult depending on the competition. So, curating quality content, graphics, etc. that are SEO-friendly, can help to optimise your webpages and increase search engines rankings. This simple principle is important. That is unless you want to constantly be spending on advertisements. E-commerce stores come with a higher risk due to being target more frequently by criminal for exploitation. Therefore, you must have excellent security when dealing with customers data
How Do I Make My Website?
There are two common ways a website layout is created. The first is by using a text-based programming language such as HTML5, CSS and JavaScript. These languages tend to be extremely customisable are used to create professional looking user-friendly webpages. To use these languages, you first need to learn how they work and operate together. However, this is a lengthy process that takes time to master and is not for everybody. This is where easy to use website builders come in handy.
Ready to use website themes are popular simply because of they are extremely user friendly. Instead of programming, which is highly technical coding, website builders offer simple graphical interfaces for users. Giving you options to drag and resize elements you can easily design a professional website with next to no skill. Start by selecting or creating a template that suits your style. You can even test your skills by trying this demo website builder now!
Useful Tips To Keep in Mind
Making these steps a habit will increase your success online. We will cover steps to help design your websites layout to increase usability making pages more user friendly by implementing responsive design methods.
A User-friendly Website Navigation Is Key Too Your Success
Websites are commonly made up from multiple webpages with different content that users can access while on the site. Websites that lack proper navigation have lower conversion rates compared to those with good navigation. This is due to users not being able to access other webpages on the website that may trigger a conversion. Poor navigation prevents users from finding other webpages limiting their usage to the pages they can find. Many users will not be aware other pages exist therefore will not hunt for them.
When designing your website starting with navigation will make your life easier. We recommend you think about what pages you will be making. What categories and subcategories do these pages fall into? For example, if creating a website for recipes good categories could be “Vegan Meals”, “Chicken Meals” and “Fish Meals”, this tells the user by clicking this link you will see “Vegan Meals”. Bad categories examples would be “My favourite” and “What I eat on Sunday”. These are bad categories due to being vague users look for specific information and it is important that they can see where the information they require is.
Once you have decided what categories you will be using you need to design the system for the end user to navigate with. This can be a simple header with links on at the top of the page to drop-down menus with more options. Leading to a more positive user friendly website experience where users can easily navigate webpages to find the relevant information they require potentially boosting conversion rates.
Not only does having good navigation improve the overall layout and usability of your website but boosts search ranking results. Search engines will be able to read your website easier and be able to show all pages in search results.
Maintain a Consistent Design Theme Throughout all Webpages
To reduce confusion for the end user maintaining a consistent design theme throughout all pages is important. For example; If two pages on your site are designed differently users may believe they have left your site, reducing the chance of a conversion. Having a consistent design makes your site more professional and tells users that all pages with that design are owned by your website. Websites that look more professional have better conversion rates than those that don’t.
To maintain a consistent design theme we recommend you try the following tips:
- Select a colour scheme for your website that works with your logo. This is important as the colour scheme makes the website stand out and assigns those colours with your brand. Selecting colours that both work together and work well with your logo is challenging however once selected will look highly professional and leave a distinct feature visitor will remember next time when visiting.
- Fonts are an important aspect of a website. If every page used a different font the website would look poorly maintained. Selecting specific fonts for your website makes your text look professional and easier to read for the end user.
- Responsive Aspects. If your website is responsive to user interactions (Hovering over menu option brings up drop menu) it is important to keep these interactions the same on every page.
Keep The Focus Clear Using Targeted Content
When accessing a website user have specific reasons for doing so (What they searched for). Understanding why users are accessing your webpage is important. Using this data, you can increase conversion rates. This can be achieved by ensuring the targeted content within the webpage is clear for the user to see. If a user cannot find the information, they require on your page they will leave. This reduces conversions as less users are satisfied. By making the information the user requires clear you have a higher chance for conversions and return visits as the users has been satisfied.
Responsive Design Boots Traffic Significantly
As we all know you can access the internet from a range of devices; Desktops, Laptops, SmartPhones , Tablets etc etc. The issue with this would be the screen resolution, for each user the website must adapt to their device’s resolution. Websites that do not adapt to different screen resolutions look horrible on different devices. If a user accesses your website on a device that is not supported the website will load however will be extremely messy with buttons and text scattered everywhere. Leading to an unusable website. This removes a huge potential market from your reach as these potential clients cannot use your website without a desktop.
For your website to load correctly on any device you need to take advantage of responsive design. If using a website builder this should be done automatically, however if programming you need to include breakpoints.
What Are Breakpoints?
A breakpoint signals how to display content within the browser, by stating where content can be cut and either moved to the side or below, the browser can adapt a user-friendly website layout to a user’s resolution. By declaring three breakpoints (Desktop, Tablet and mobile) you signal how the content is structured on these devices. When users access your user-friendly website the browser selects the breakpoint best suited to the device resolution.
To adapt images to resize according to screen resolution it is important to include this HTML code: <img src=”my-image.jpg” style=”max-width:100%; height:auto;”alt=”your text”>. This will prevent images from resizing incorrectly potentially covering other content.
By implanting responsive design and adapting images your website can now load on any device significantly increasing the amount of potential traffic available to you.
Clickable Elements Sizing
Clickable elements are elements that users interact with on your website such as buttons and hyperlink text. It is important to remember that these elements can be challenging for some users to click depending on their device. Therefore, you must ensure all elements are usable on all devices to ensure users can use your website.
Summary
Creating a website is rewarding as you make progress. Sticking to these tips can improve how professional your website looks to you are the end user. If you would like further guidance we recommend reading: The quick and easy guide to building user-friendly websites.
