By Polina Ilieva, Solution Sales Specialist at Flat Rock
The website serves as a bridge between companies and their customers. Once a business decides to go ahead and build their own website, they should be aware of the audience and its expectations in order to create a suitable design and content.
Having a modern and user-friendly web design, will help companies keep their users longer on the site, which may eventually lead to generating more leads and increasing their conversion rate. An easy to use website will also help customers get as much information as needed and keep their interest in the products/services provided by the supplier.
In order to meet your users’ expectations, we would like to offer you a few tips to consider when developing your corporate website.
Design
Online shops are like real ones – the more you like them, the longer you stay in. It is the same with websites. If the atmosphere that it creates is pleasant, it makes you stay longer and increase the chances of buying something. Colours are the details that the eye catches first. Using red or orange in a combination with a muted colour forces you to act. It is suitable for buttons such as “Subscribe”, “Register”, “Join us”, etc. Blue and green are relaxing colours and they convey a feeling of security, safety and independence, which make them a great fit for corporate or medical websites. Even though it is essential to choose the right colours, it is a necessity to be able to combine them well and keep them consistent on all the pages. The same applies for the chosen font.
In order to create the atmosphere that will keep your users longer, you may also need to consider whether having advertisement on the website will not annoy your audience.
Speed
While choosing the right design is important, it will be a waste of time if your website is slow and pushes your visitors away. If there are speed problems, the users will click elsewhere or they may wait for the first page to load, but will definitely think about opening a second one. You will be lucky if your customer waits 10 seconds for the first page to open. That is why responsiveness can be a vital competitive advantage for online success.
To decrease the loading time, you can use CSS as much as possible. Tables usually take longer time to appear. If your most important details (contact details, list of products/services, company’s background, etc.) are text based/CSS, rather than images, that will improve the loading time.
Organization of information
The content is the thing that will make people come and visit your website. That is why keeping it modern is important. Updating your content by uploading blog articles, promotions, new services, etc. means that your company still operates on the market and is open for online communication. Websites by definition are worldwide, which means that your users may come from different countries. Therefore using a simple and clear language will help them browse easily. Never assume that the people visiting your website trust your brand. Treat them in such a way so that you earn their respect.
When organizing the information, it is important to remember that nearly 80% of the initial focus is at the top left corner of the page. You will also need to decide whether to use a left or right menu. Right-handed users feel the sidebars on the right much more “natural”. However, with the years, they have also become used to searching for a menu on the left side. Left menus are suitable for e-commerce websites as people would search for product categories there and may decide to buy other products as well. But no matter what navigation you choose, it should be consistent for all your pages.
If you are interested in creating or refreshing your website or need more information as to how to make it more attractive, do not hesitate to contact us. Meanwhile take a look at our portfolio and see how we have implemented the tips above in various projects.
