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5 top tips in making a great website

Sarah Stowe

A website is a great way to showcase the skills, products, services and specialisations your business has to offer. Another great advantage in bringing your business online is the potential exposure it can receive – from the locals in your neighbourhood to the other side of the world.

A website let’s you create a virtual shopfront that is open 24 hours, seven days a week. It allows potential clienteles to access information about your business at any time and any location.

Of course, first impressions still count – even in the World Wide Web! To make sure your website does come across as credible, it needs to be designed in a way that it is professional, clean, and simple and gives your visitors a reason to stay longer. Here are my 5 top tips to help you create a great website.

Five­­­ top tips in making a great website

1. Easy to see, easy to read

Your website needs to be pleasing to the eye or it would be quite difficult for your visitors to source for information. Make sure your website design has a consistent theme and also includes plenty of white space, especially around your content.

A crammed and busy design will make it hard for visitors to find and read your information and would give them incentive to leave your website.

2. Easy to navigate, easy to find

Poor and confusing navigation is equivalent to putting your visitors in a maze! Your visitors need to be able to find their way around your website easily or they will leave.

You can choose to provide a menu bar at the top of every page, which would have hyperlinks to all the important pages, such as about us and contacts, across your website.

3. Fast loading pages, less waiting time

Nobody likes to wait – especially on the internet. If your website design consists of too much loading time your visitors will grow impatient and leave. Make sure your website pages are fast to load across all browsers, including mobile.

Graphics often are the reason web pages are slow to load. A good way to get around this is to make sure your graphics are saved in the smallest file size as possible without sacrificing its picture quality. Another method is to split your graphics across the page in order to help the webpage load faster.

4. Well written copy, highly credible content

The content on a website is critical – it sets apart the good from the bad. Content on a website is like setting a good first impression.  If you cannot grab your potential client’s attention within their first visit, or the copy is difficult to read and understand, it will set a bad impression not only for your website but for your business as well.

Make sure you keep your content short, choose your words carefully, check for spelling and grammar mistakes and use sub-headings and dot points to make it scannable for your visitors.  Website copy should be written so that visitors can understand the basis of the content straight away but at the same time be detailed, thorough and informative.

5. Make it friendly, make it engaging

Just like running a store, customers like to visit shops that provide them a good, friendly and engaging experience. When done well, these customers will become regulars and visit your shop again and again. A website is just like that, you need to make it friendly, approachable and engaging to keep your visitor stays longer and revisit counts higher.

You can add team photos and team member information for that personal touch. You can also consider adding in testimonials, case studies and customer photos and reviews. Also don’t forget to utilise Social Media tools, such as Facebook and Twitter. Social Media is a great way to engage and keep in contact with your customers, as well as provide them with instant updates and news about your business.