By Jim Clanin
Maintaining a professional website is important for all manners and sizes of businesses. These days, customers are immediately turned off when a company hosts a poor website design and presentation. As more and more businesses move to the internet, online presence becomes increasingly important. Within the last decade, small business, in particular, have become especially susceptible to changes and advances in the internet world. In order to ensure success online, websites must appeal to internet-savvy customers. Meanwhile, companies a sophisticated design are swiftly forgotten.
Simplicity
Following the trend of internet titan, Google, less is often more when it comes to website design. A business site must appear clean, organized and intuitive. Customers enjoy minimalist designs, without a ton of ads, links, and pop-ups. Ultimately, the success of a simple website depends heavily on usability: how fast the typical user can access a site and find exactly what they’re looking for.
Common Mistakes
- Businesses often let their website sit by the way-side, on the back-burner, so to speak, underestimating the importance of a quality website. To avoid this pitfall, web design should be placed, as a priority, among any other aspect of establishing a successful business.
- Many websites neglect to update their sites frequently enough to keep up with change. Outdated information, including prices, locations, hours, services, general contact details, and so on can hinder a site from reaching business goals. Internet influences and customers alike will notice continuity issues and a business’s credibility will dwindle.
- Linking out to other websites is crucial to online visibility. Businesses should provide links to related information, products or services in an attempt to give customers the best user experience possible. Links should be checked at regular intervals to assure that they are not broken and the target of the link is still operational.
- Regarding web design, dead ends are pages with no links to backtrack or escape from that particular page. To avoid this user trap, every page of a business site should simply link back to the home page.
While these are not all of the problems a Atlanta website designer might face when building a business site, they are some of the most common, easily avoidable mistakes. Following a few simple rules and considering creative, stylish design decisions should provide users with a great experience, and lure in customers from the information super-highway.
