Design Hacks for Your Website
Whether you’re a business owner or independent professional, your website is an online portfolio, a hub of information and a powerful sales tool. Harnessing the power of your site can be incredibly rewarding – but without a strategic and intelligent approach to web design, it will never achieve its promotional potential.
The key to effective web design is choosing function over fashion, and realising you can still have both. Startups have a lot to gain from a thoughtful approach to the anatomy of their company site – and we’re about to let you in on some industry secrets guaranteed to make your website work for you.
Brand Identity
As an entrepreneur, your brand identity is the greatest tool at your disposal. Flat and forgettable web design has the potential to hinder the online success of any startup – but by creating a powerful and distinctive brand identity for your business, you can transform your website into an immersive world of moving parts designed to deliver.
An authentic brand image that’s cohesive across your logo and web design, as well as your range of digital platforms, leaves a lasting impact and creates invaluable brand recognition for your startup.
Scrolling Header
One of the first web design worries any startup will face is minimising excess – especially since any omission is bound to feel like a sacrifice. The beauty of bespoke web design is that it gives you the chance to prioritise the essentials, offering users an experience that is as streamlined and gratifying as possible.
Opting for a website header that scrolls through a range of images, messages or offers allows you to make the same space work three or four times as hard – meaning you won’t need to risk neglecting any of your core aims and can allow all of them a prime spot on your site.
Above-the-Fold Action
Professional web designers create layouts that serve a purpose – with every design decision contributing to your overall goals. Whatever action you’d like your visitors to take, web design best practices make this process as clear and condensed as possible. Offering your most important actions as early in the page as possible maximises visibility – so whether it’s the option to download a resource, make an enquiry or join your mailing list, giving this call-to-action prime placement above the fold in the page will ensure it doesn’t get missed.
Contact Footer
Whatever your startup, inquiries are the holy grail of online engagement, and anything web designers can do to make contacting you as straightforward as physically possible is ultimately driving sales. Overly complex or unclear contact forms are the easiest way to deter prospective customers – and prompts to ‘get in touch’ that are hidden amongst large volumes of text prove equally ineffective.
Instead, transforming your website’s footer into a visually striking and unmissable contact form means no visitor will miss out on an opportunity to contact you. Integrating essential functionality like this into the aesthetic make-up of your site promises a seamless and satisfying user journey and maximises the efficacy of your website in the process.
The key thing to remember as a website owner – whatever audience you’re targeting and whatever sector you’re in – is that web design exists to benefit the user. By offering them the best possible online experience, you’ll demonstrate that encounters with your brand are rewarding ones and they’ll come back for more.
