What services or products do you offer?

Think about what already works in your industry and how you wish your customers to perceive you and your company. For example, a medical or dental clinic may use blue, grey and white tones as they’re representative of the medical world. The layout should be pretty simple, the website is not selling the next Folk Fest tickets here! Display key information such as the contact number, a quick way to book or request an appointment and the services you offer. The font should also be a clean as possible, all these aspects will define how visitors perceive the quality of the practice, its cleanliness and professionalism.

As another example, if you’re a photographer, you might want a black background to enhance your photos and the home page to be a large lightbox of your most beautiful creations. The menus can be on the side, you may want to catch people’s attention right away with colors and composition.

What colors should you choose?

Colors are the catalysts of emotions. The question to ask yourself is “How do I want them to feel?”.
What emotions should the visitors of your website feel?
Do you want them to feel calm, excited, feel a sense of luxury, happiness…

Check this interesting article about color psychology and discover what emotions can colors trigger.

When choosing colors for your website, remember to keep a harmony, a consistency between your logo, your website and anything else that represents your company. Too many different colors and you may confuse your audience. They need a guide, something that tells them quickly who you are.

What layout should you choose?

Again, put yourself into the shoes of your audience.
Are you selling women’s handbags and other fashion accessories? You probably want to display your collection on the home page with “Add to cart” buttons right away. No need to tell them all about the reasons why you chose to design a bag in a certain way, they should find this information later, show them what you offer first!

In general, people expect a certain number of items to be present on a well-designed website nowadays, regardless of your industry:

-A home page slider engages people visually although using it wisely is recommended. If you build 12 slides in your slider, chances are your visitors won’t wait to watch it until the end.

-Icons, photos and videos are great eye-catching items that help draw your visitors’ attention to specific information or calls-to-action.

-A footer with key information such as contact, map, navigation, latest Tweets, latest blog posts…
This helps making it easy for your visitors to find their way around and access key information at anytime.

Summary

We live in a visual world. How your website looks will make a difference between people trusting you or not. Also, two important factors to consider: grammar and spelling!!! You can be the most skilled person and the one your visitors will need, if your website is ravaged by grammar and spelling mistakes, chances are you’ve lost a lot of credibility. Double check your content and take time to find out the meaning of what you’ve written, how it can be perceived before publishing it!

If you create a new page or post, please avoid publishing it with “this is a test” written. Remember that if you publish something, the whole world can see it, along with search engines and this hurts your reputation! There are plenty of options to preview your creations and save as drafts, especially in WordPress.

Finally, try to keep things evolving on your website, don’t be afraid to tweak it so it represents yourself or your company better, keep putting yourself into your customers’ shoes and see how you feel when looking at your website. A great way to find out if you’re on track is to get feedback. Why not put together a quick survey and ask people what they think about your new website?

Do you need help with your new website? Contact me by email and let me know how I can help you make the most of it!