Having a website is a must for any business that wants to establish itself in the market. It is a way for potential customers to get an idea on your services and to contact you about those services. A well-designed website makes it easy for customers to navigate and understand your content creating increased conversions and improve your Google rank.

Overall Layout

First things first, you’ve got to have a plan. Researching website design elements you like from other websites helps to design a blueprint of how you want your website to look. While you can be unique and creative with your designs there are some website design elements that have proven to make a great first impression to users.

• Simple/Minimalistic
• Plenty of whitespace
• Grid-based designs
• Photos and Graphics (make sure images are relevant and related to your brand)

However you decide to layout your website, visitors behaviors should be based on the design. If you want them to look at a specific form, make it easy to see and navigate to.

Color Scheme

The color scheme you choose to use for your website should match your companies brand. When deciding on what colors should be used where start by organizing which of the colors you have chosen to be dominant. Once the dominant color(s) are chosen you can then use your secondary color palette to create eye-catching buttons or forms. This is also known as choosing complementary colors (colors opposite on the color wheel) for your dominant and secondary color scheme.

Font

Just as color is important for a visual guide for each user so is the font. When choosing fonts you should consider.

• How readable it is (16 pixels)
• Using Complementary font for headings or accents
• Good contrast between the text and the background color (black on white, white on black)

To break help break up blocks of text people have used a mix serif and san serif fonts. This creates split and will let people know where the header ends and where the first paragraph begins.

Navigation

Once you have established the overall layout, color scheme, and fonts you can start building how people should navigate through your website. It’s easy to use animated and hover effects but these are design and UX elements to avoid when creating navigation as it might be difficult for some people to use. Navigational elements can exist in sites header, body, and footer to give visitors information as quickly as possible. Your menu bar which is usually located in the body of a site will use design methods such as the hamburger menu that creates a way to save space by hiding your navigation off-site, (aka the three parallel, horizontal lines).

Content

Now that everything is organized to your liking, it is finally time to add content. Your content should be relatable to the services you are providing and is easy to understand for each visitor. You want your information to be quick, trustworthy, and show your experience and expertise. Utilizing different organization methods such as lists and display text makes it easier for the reader to digest the important information you want them to know. This is also where you will implement SEO tactics.

Mobile website

Finally, you love your design and your website is complete and looks amazing. But as we know, the digital world is not all done on a desktop or laptop. It’s now time to create a mobile site for your website since most website traffic comes from searches on mobile devices. Google uses the quality of your mobile site to establish rank on the first page, so it is important to make sure your website is mobile friendly.