Every business in this competitive digital landscape needs a professional and catchy website to augment its brand presence and become accessible to customers.
A website is the first point of contact between a business and its target customers. It never makes sense to build a dull or slow website without a captivating design, graphics, intuitive call-to-actions, or anything else that defines a modern, engaging website.
If a business has a legacy website that seems outdated now or has created an essential website because it had yet to think of making a dynamic website back then, it might face the consequences. Less traffic and engagement, slow loading, more visitors bouncing off, and non-responsiveness in mobiles are some that are affecting its brand’s image.
In that case, it’s time for the business to invest in effective website design strategies to give the website a fresh look while enhancing its functionality, traffic flow, and conversions. Read this blog to know what website design strategies must be deployed to redesign and revive a website!
4 Factors to Determine Whether A Website Needs Redesign
Before hiring a web design agency to improve its website design, the business owner must know whether the design is dull and can no longer compete with other websites.
The following signs help determine whether a website needs improvement in design.
- Higher bounce rate: If the bounce rate is higher, users quickly leave the website by viewing the first page. It’s because the website looks too dull or uninteresting at first appearance.
- Slower response time: The website pages are not loading fast as users click on them, making navigation slower and increasing the bounced-off traffic.
- Non-responsiveness: The website does not load on mobiles or tablets, which means it is not responsive. With more than 50% of online traffic comprising mobile users, optimising the website for mobile users is imperative.
- Low average time: If the users spend less time on the website, as denoted by lower average time on the page, it’s another plain sign that the website needs improvement. It has no engaging elements that will compel visitors to spend more time.
Significance of Website Design for a Business
A website is a paramount tool for businesses in today’s digital landscape, helping them amplify their online presence. While a website is a company’s virtual storefront, enabling it to connect with more customers by overcoming physical boundaries, its relevance is far more widespread.
Sets first impression on customers
Visitors to the website can easily perceive the quality of products or services or how well the business will treat them by looking at the site. It creates the business’s first impression and makes them decide whether to stay and look further or go away! This implies that an appealing website design will make visitors stay and convert most of them into leads.
Improves SEO impact
A website’s design significantly impacts the business’s SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) strategy. The search engine algorithms rank a website that has a mobile-friendly design. So, a website has a better chance of driving organic traffic if its design is strikingly responsive!
Builds trust in your business
A well-designed website leaves a positive impression on first-time visitors. It works as an online counterpart of the business’s physical storefront; hence, a sleek design builds customer trust. They will be willing to spend time on the site to discover services or more about the business.
Increases competitiveness
Since other businesses in the industry already have a website, a business must have its website, too, to look updated as per the trends. A website with proper design will help the business remain competitive and attract the target audience.
10 Top Website Design Strategies to Improve Its Performance
While website design immensely impacts the business and helps improve sales, businesses must find strategies to enhance the design if it needs to be updated. Here are some effective strategies for website design that will help enhance the visual depth of website aesthetics while improving traffic flow and conversions.
Strategy 1: Incorporate Visual Hierarchy Techniques
Visual hierarchy is one of the best methods for reviving website visuals, and it organises various design elements of the website according to their relevance. The technique helps create a user experience for the website that attracts the audience only towards the focal points of the website, which can be images, videos, texts, or CTA buttons. In other words, maintaining a visual hierarchy of a website is also about strategically organising the layout to guide the visitors towards a common goal or outcome.
So, by redesigning the website incorporating visual hierarchy, the website instantly grabs visitors’ attention, guides them in navigating the site, and increases readability and engagement.
Strategy 2: Utilise Parallax Scrolling Effect
Parallax scrolling is a trending visual effect where the background of a website page remains static, but the foreground moves either vertically or horizontally. It adds to the website’s visual appearance, making it more attractive to visitors as they scroll down.
When done perfectly, parallax scrolling generates a fascinating effect on the website, giving users a seamless virtual experience. While the effect is quite powerful in enhancing the visual aesthetics and performance of the site, the business should know how to apply it. It should be used as one particular element rather than on every site page.
Secondly, parallax scrolling uses CSS shapes or interesting media elements that create a visual depth in the website. Lastly, parallax scrolling is also about the colour used in the background, and it is necessary to balance the tones between the background and foreground.
For all these intricate concerns, the business must seek the professional expertise of a website design agency to apply parallax scrolling correctly as a part of their website design strategies.
Strategy 3: Experiment with Layering Elements
It is a core web design strategy that every business should take advantage of while enhancing the website’s design. There are three elements for layering to consider while designing – structure, style, and behaviour.
The structure is the underlying HTML code and forms the website’s foundation, where the business stores the information it wants to share with visitors, which could be text, graphics, or images.
The style layer defines how the structured HTML document will appear on the website, and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is the main element of the layer. Lastly, the behaviour layer is responsible for making the website interactive for visitors. It defines how a web page will respond to users’ actions on the website.
While improving the design of a website for better performance, it is necessary to break down the structure into these three layer elements. It elevates the website’s performance by increasing page load speed, enhancing accessibility, improving SEO, etc.
Strategy 4: Optimise Typography for Depth Perception
Many business owners need to realise that fonts or typography impacts the visual depth of website layout, just like other elements. The right typography can transform a website into an appealing one that profoundly impacts visitors.
One golden rule is choosing the right fonts while reinventing the website design strategies. Choose one font type for the website that should be easily read and align with the business’s overall brand message. Too many fonts confuse the viewers and make it challenging to understand the intuition or depth of the brand’s message.
Also, focusing on the right font can create a friendly tone for the website content, making it more accessible to the audience or potential customers.
Strategy 5: Enhance Color Contrast for Depth
Colour contrast plays a dominant role in the web design strategy and helps users read and perceive the information on the website effortlessly.
The proper colour contrast creates a logical visual hierarchy and depth in the website layout, seamlessly bringing the more essential elements into the viewers’ focus. It consequently helps the business to establish a brand identity and sets the tone of its brand.
Maintaining the right balance or contrast in the colours helps enhance the website’s aesthetics, making the text more legible and letting the other design elements stand out.
Strategy 6: Implement Fun Visual Elements
As humans tend to get attracted towards stunning visual elements, one of the influential website design strategies is to incorporate fun elements that can add a spark to the website. Those elements can be anything, from images, infographics, and animations to interesting flowcharts.
Adding visual elements is considered one of the inherent strategies for improving website appearance that impacts conversions. More fun elements transform the website from boring to fascinating while making the services offered or the purpose of the business more understandable to the audience.
Strategy 7: Opt for Responsive Design
It must be on the list of strategies for enhancing website design for engagement. A responsive website substantially raises the traffic flow and chances of conversions. Making the website responsive is undoubtedly one of the imperative web design enhancement techniques in today’s digital landscape, where mobiles dominate the online user segment.
With more than 50% of web traffic generated through mobiles, a website that is not mobile responsive will lose a significant portion of visitors and, subsequently, conversions!
Responsive website design is a prerequisite for businesses to thrive in this mobile era. However, to make the website responsive, the company needs the professional assistance of a web design agency that emphasises techniques like a mobile-responsive theme, makes CSS and images light, uses large readable fonts, and optimises website loading speed.
Strategy 8: Streamline Navigation for Depth Perception
A business looking for website design strategies must reevaluate its website navigation and understand the site hierarchy to improve it.
Streamlining the navigation of an existing site also means understanding viewers’ perceptions. The website must be easy to navigate, i.e., users can get the information they want quickly and easily.
Some practical ways to restore the navigation for increasing depth perception in web design are linking the website’s logo to the home page, making the Menu easy to locate, and providing vertical navigation.
Strategy 9: Leverage White Space Effectively
White space is considered one of the significant design elements for website revitalisation. Adjusting the white space on a website helps enhance the content’s readability and create balance in viewers’ eyes.
Professional designers emphasise white space for its aesthetic importance and improve the UI/UX of the website.
The design of a website with appropriate white space enhances the look and feel of the website, enhances the comprehension of the content for the readers, and improves the interaction rate between the design and users.
Strategy 10: Seek Professional Web Design Assistance
A business must seek assistance from a professional web design agency to apply all the website design strategies. They have expert and skilled web designers who thoroughly evaluate the design to find the flaws and revive its design, adding dimensionality to website aesthetics.
A reliable web design agency also offers customisable services with modern strategies for web design necessary to make a website stand out among its competition.
Atanu Sarkar
Atanu Sarkar, the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Webskitters LTD & Webskitters Technology Solutions Pvt. Ltd., an award-winning Web Design & Web Development Company. He has strong data analytics, business development, and entrepreneurship skills. He keeps himself updated about the latest technological innovations in his past time and encourages his team to incorporate new technologies and move beyond the defined boundaries of design, development, and digital marketing.
