08 Dec How to Improve Your Website and Get More Leads

Website design is fast becoming a crucial element in promoting your brand. You may already be aware that having a website could benefit your business but, you might not be fully convinced of the value it could mean for your brand and the impact it could have on your brand image.

The Difference Between a “Good” and “Bad” Website

Both (good and bad websites) are relatively easy to make. However, a website that one person believes is great, could be the exact opposite of what another perceives to be the opposite. Taking this fact to account, the best way to distinguish websites is to explain the difference in effectiveness between the two.

The Good, The Bad and The Improved

Conflicting Design Choices

You should strive to create a website that is easy to understand and has the same theme running throughout. This can be achieved though using standardising fonts, font sizing to differentiate headings and paragraphs and steering clear of using too many colours. It is also important to take note of the benefits of information hierarchy and how implementing this can allow for a better user experience, which could result in increased lead generation on the website.

Generally, a website will have more than one person working on the design, and all too often this is evident to anyone analysing the site. The site may lack consistency in the; font, image, and page layout decisions. There might sometimes be information that appears to be contradictory also.

The Bad – A great example of a site that could do with a bit help improving their design choices is PackRat. This website evidently has a wide product offering and thus there is a lot to work with. This can be used to benefit the company’s online success in today’s predominantly digital age.

The improvement – A good example of a website that has improved consistency is, House of Shibe. On this site, the layout, font, image and overall design consistency is evident. This leads to a great user experience – what you want to achieve.

Key Information

Important information should be included on the landing page of your website. This is to ensure that the person viewing the site knows exactly what the site is about and can decide if it answers the reason why they are there or not.

The Bad – If users find themselves having to scroll down a website page and search for information that is relevant to them, it may result in an undesirable response. The message should be clear right from the word “go”.

The Improvement – One way a website could make information (such as services they offer) clear is by using circle icons and a slider at the top of the webpage for additional information. An example of a site that successfully did this is 360 Deals. As seen below, they have represented the key info through a slider at the top of the website and they have used clear icons to represent products and services that the company offers.

Navigation aka The Menu

When designing your website, you need to keep in mind that you want the site to be as easy for an audience to understand as possible. If it is easy to navigate through, you are more likely to keep visitors on your site for longer periods of time, which will hence improve the success of the website. It is important to categorize the correct information under the correct pages. People don’t want to search for information.

The Bad – Too often you come across a website that has a menu navigation that is either confusing or not there at all. This leads to the viewer having to think about what they are doing when they are navigating through your site. This could result in frustration and the visitor might not be interested to find out more about the company.

An example of a site that has a navigation that is difficult to understand is the African Expedition site. At first glance, it is difficult to understand what the site is about, as seen in the image provided below. Once you try to interact with the website, you met with difficulties in the navigation.

The Improvement – A great example of a site that has been able to achieve fluid navigation is the Freckle Eyewear website. You can clearly see where everything is located. The main message (catalogue) of the site has also been highlighted because it is an it is an e-Commerce website.

Website colours

You ultimately want users to focus on your content, ideas and your company. Don’t allow them to focus on the design of your site over the message the design is meant to be highlighting. Therefore, make use of conventional and where possible, solid colours that highlight the content on your site.

The Bad – It is very easy to become excited about using exotic colours on your website which can make for a unique digital presence that could potentially lead to viewers wanting to take a second look. Unfortunately, the shock factor does not always allow for this. There is a small, however detrimental difference between what makes your page “pop” and what is distracting to visitors.

The Improvement – A good example would be that of the Actionaid Africa website. The contrast between the greys, red and white, highlight the content and the message is communicated well as a result of this. It also allows for the images to play a part in the composition of the site as well, as opposed to appearing too cluttered.

Low Quality Imagery/ Graphics and Unreadable Fonts

You don’t want to solely rely on imagery to communicate your message With that taken into consideration, the various forms of imagery and graphics that you place on your website should be high in quality. This must either be developed by a professional, or you could consider purchasing from a site such as Shutterstock.

The Bad : Some companies have very outdated websites that make use of clipart imagery or low quality images (such as those taken on phones that have substandard cameras). You also sometimes find that in addition to this, fonts are often hard to read or are not displayed as they should be by modern day browsers.  The website may also be unresponsive too. An example of a website that has used bad quality imagery that could definitely be improved is the Ukwazi Group website.

Although the overall concept of the site is plausible, the quality of the website can be improved with higher resolution imagery and better graphics in general. The current images on the site appear pixelated.

The Improvement – When analysing if you have made the right choice in your font selection, try putting yourself in the viewer’s positon and ask yourself, “If I was looking at this website, would understand straight away?”. You may just find that you are unable to understand what is being communicated. There are many sources where you can find web fonts that are best for your website such as Awwwards. A good example of a site that makes use of clear fonts and imagery that communicates the message of the firm well is the site for Vula Green Energy Incubator.

Choose The Right Design Team

Your website is ultimately your online representative and can be responsible for a substantial amount of leads being made (or fail to, as may be the case). It is therefore important that you don’t just let anyone design or work on it. Work with, or assign the job to a team of expert creative professionals who know how to get you the results you’re looking for.