7 Useful Website Design Tips

1. Ensure Your Website Has Easy Navigation

Your website needs to be functional and easy to navigate. Users should be able to land on your homepage and find what they need quickly and simply. This is even more important for a small business, as you likely face a lot of stiff competition.

You can't afford to lose customers due to a clunky website design.

Website design for small businesses revolves around a few elements, such as a well-defined hierarchy. Your site design should have a clear purpose and focus on that purpose.

You don't want to distract the user with too many slides or text blocks. Their eyes should naturally land on what's most important. The right web design can do that.

2. Use Consistent Branding

Having consistent branding across your website is extremely important as it makes your business look more professional. It also gives your website a sense of cohesion.

This means having a consistent layout, color scheme, and typography across the different pages on your website. One of the best web design tips we can offer is to create and use a style guide. Style guides help to keep everything consistent.

When you have a style guide, it's also easier to add new elements to your website in the future.

Here's a pro tip—did you know there's a difference between brand identity and brand image? Your brand identity is the way you want to present your business and how you want people to see your company. Brand image is the way that customers perceive you.

If you want to create a strong, favorable brand image, working with a web design company can put you on the right path.

3. Choose the Right Color Palette

Adding to the last point, the colors you choose can have an impact on the way customers see you. Colors can impact emotions. For instance, bright or bold colors might work for a pediatrician, but they might not work for a rehab center or a law office.

Choosing the right color palette comes down to your intended audience. Using the pediatrician example, your intended audience would most likely be the parents of young children.

If your business has a brand color palette, now is the time to incorporate it into the website design. This helps to create cohesive branding.

Are you feeling a little lost and not sure what colors would work best for your industry? Your web design company can help by learning more about your business and identifying your vision and goals.

4. Use High-Quality Photos

Don't expect to slap any photo on your website and have it work for you. The best websites use photos that communicate something. Photos should be clear and relevant but not too distracting.

Banner images should evoke some type of emotional response. If you're a yoga studio, maybe you want to choose a beach scene to make people feel relaxed or peaceful. If you're an architectural firm, you'll want professional photos of your buildings.

No matter your industry, photos should look good and achieve some purpose. Perhaps you want to inspire your audience or wow them. Choosing the right picture for this isn't always easy, which is why it's helpful to have the right design company on your side.

Keep in mind any text on your banners and photos should be easy to read. You may need to edit the photographs to make them easier on the eyes and to make the text readable.

Lastly, carefully consider how you crop your pictures. It's easy to crop photos too closely and to cut out key details. You also want to have a feeling of consistency throughout your website.

5. Personalize and Humanize

You want to show people the faces behind your company, so they can relate to you better. Most businesses do this with an "About" page. However, this page shouldn't be a plain block of text.

Personalize it with photos of yourself and your staff. Tell a story and let people know what your brand is all about. What drives you, and how can you help your customers?

This helps to humanize your business. People love going behind the scenes and seeing what happens off the screen. One of the best ways to do this is with social media, but you can do it with photographs, too.

6. Less Is More

One of the trends for 2022 is the less is more approach. Focus on one thing that your business does well rather than spreading yourself too thin.

You can also follow this approach in design. You don't want to overwhelm your audience with too many addons and distracting elements. Certain businesses can even benefit from a more minimalist, streamlined design.

7. Ensure You Have a Fast Page Loading Speed

How quickly does your website load? Slow websites can frustrate people and cause them to click away, which negatively impacts your website's ranking.

Another website design trend for 2022 is that web pages are getting faster than ever. People don't want to have to wait around. Don't lose customers to your competitors because your web pages aren't loading quickly enough!

One way to do this is to ensure your website is mobile-optimized. Each year, more people use their mobile devices to browse the web. Businesses that aren't optimized for mobile will fall behind.