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If you're just creating a website from the beginning and want to get an understanding of how to create a website with a good design, or you may already be running a website but want to update the design to improve the user experience.

Read on for some tips to help get you started [endclip]:

  1. Keep it simple

It's key to design a website that is easy to read and navigate. There's a lot of research that suggests website users have short attention spans. If your webpage is distracting or chaotic, users will bounce away from the website rather than engage with it.

  1. Use a clean navigation

Designing a clean, intuitive navigation will improve user experience and will hugely influence how successful your website is at directing users through to a valuable conversion or goal.

  1. Choose colours that complement

Choose a colour scheme that enhances the user experience. Often this means choosing simple, clean, and crisp colours that makes it easy for users to read your website's text. This means your copy will have better visual impact which makes it more effective in delivering your key messages.

  1. Is the font readable?

When you're designing your website, make sure you use a legible webfont that is easy for people to read – the most common fonts to use include: Helvetica, Verdana or Arial. Use a decent font size that does not take up too much room on your page.

  1. Make it friendly to search engines

It's not enough to just have a good looking website. You need to also think about search engine optimization (SEO), the practice of making your website more search engine friendly so that it performs better in search results. This is something that might not be that obvious to you, so we have a team of experts that you can contact who will be able to explain and help you with any queries on this topic.

  1. Content is KEY

Websites with more relevant content rise higher in searches than those with less relevant content. If you want to get to the top of Google's search engine results pages, you need to be able to prove that you can provide the content that visitors to your website are looking for. It's important that you have regular updates that include quality content. This feeds Google the information it needs to recognise your thought-leadership on related subjects, and as a result your website will gain organic traffic and maintain top page rankings.

  1. Images vs Text

Images are useful in creating beautiful looking websites. But when a search engine crawls through your website looking for relevant content, it cannot read text in the image, so it is important to get the most effective balance where your website uses inviting, relevant and emotive images and also readable text so that it is searchable.

  1. Quick load times for webpages

Up to two seconds is the maximum it should take. Preferably one second. If load times are taking longer there is a risk that you're losing a significant number of visitors who may not wait that long. We offer hosting services that ensure your website has seriously fast load times. Get in touch if you want to find out more about our hosting services.

  1. Call to actions

Your website design should include straight-forward messages that invite your visitor to act. Creating a valuable transaction from your traffic is important to the business aims of your website. So it makes sense to make it as obvious as possible where and how to act on your website. Whether it’s to click to download a document, or directing to an article, optimising a specific landing page with an offer - your aim is to make it as easy as possible for visitors to engage with your website.

  1. Hire a professional

Keeping it fresh and active is a problem for both the one man band and the larger dedicated web teams. By using an outsourced supplier for your website you are able to use a wider breadth of resource and access more expertise and experience. This way you can improve your website to new highs that may not be achieved in-house.

Are you about to redesign or create a new website? Get in touch with our web design team today.

The team at BarkWeb