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What is crucial for effective website design?

A man and a woman standing over a table looking at a piece of paper. The male is wearing a casual denim shirt and holding a pen. The female is wearing a white t-shirt and is standing slightly in the background

A beautiful website will leave a great impression. There are a lot of different directions you can adventure into when designing a new website. We’ve put our heads together to give you this easy to follow list that will help you create the most effective website design.

Keep it simple

You could be forgiven for thinking that the more you add to your website, the better the experience for your audiences. But, there is a fine line between being informative and causing confusion or clutter. Simplicity is the way to go.

Use your space to say what you need to say, but don’t go overboard. Keep your colour palettes, fonts and other design elements clean, minimalist and simple. Not only will this create a sleek design but it will also make it easy for the viewer to digest the information. And, don’t be afraid of the white or blank spaces on your site. These are actually important design elements in their own right.

Use logical navigation

Try to view your website like taking a journey, in that there should be a logical path to follow to get from A to B. Straightforward navigation is a vital component of any website because it enables viewers to easily find the information they’re looking for. If your site lacks cohesion, some visitors may be left wondering where they’re supposed to go.

Your menu bars and page layouts are key to providing clear navigation, but you should also include easy-to-understand calls to actions so that viewers know what to expect or do next. You can easily lead them exactly where you want them to go!

Try out visual media

Cramming your website with text could be hard for your viewers, so think carefully about how you present your written information. Ideally, your text should be easily scannable, so time-starved viewers can still easily find the information they need.

Quick tip: Use lists and bullet points, for example, to break chunks of text up.

Another essential strategy to break text up is to include visual media on your site. Images speak louder than words so they’re a really important asset to your site to promote your products or services. Ideally, use your own photos, but whether you use originals or stock images make sure they’re of good quality – you don’t want a blurry, oversized image to be representing your business.

Responsive design

Effective website design involves enabling the site to be compatible for use on a range of devices, including smartphones, tablets and desktop computers. If you’ve already got a Go Sitebuilder website you won’t need to worry about responsive design as everything you create is instantly responsive!

Responsive design, in a nutshell, means that your website will adjust in size to suit a particular device. This leaves your content clear and easy to read no matter what device it’s viewed upon. With many internet users now relying exclusively on smartphones for web viewing, this is a design element that is nowadays a necessity rather than a luxury if you don’t want to miss a potential audience!

You don’t have to be a professional designer to build a website with Go Sitebuilder. Our hand-crafted, beautiful website sections will have you online within minutes – so what are you waiting for? Get online today with a 14-day free trial!

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8 things to do before launching a new website

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If you’ve just designed your new website; congratulations! Now you must be eager to launch and share it with the world. Here at Go Sitebuilder, we know how important the time leading up to launch can be. That’s why we’ve put together these 8 steps that will help you start off on the right foot and head towards success.

1. Target audience

Before you hit the button, it is important to know exactly who your target audience is. These are the people who are likely to interact with your business. It all comes down to your industry and services. For example, a company that offers electrical works would most commonly be accessed by home-owners and landlords, which would make this their target audience.

2. Market comparison

Seeing how your competitors have designed their website could be used as a key indicator of what works within your specific industry – along with what does not. However, we wouldn’t ever recommend that you copy your competitors! Use their information as a starting point in regards to design and the content, but make sure to keep things original and unique to you.

3. Content evaluation

Being mindful of the type of content you will be posting is really important to how your website will be laid out. You’ll need to make sure everything is easy to navigate and people can find exactly what they’re looking for. The more content you have, the more that will need to be done in terms of designing your website. Having more content also means there is more for clients to read and interact with when the website is live.

4. Website security

A secure website is a must. Clients should feel safe using your site and entering their personal details. Without a secure site, hackers can access the site, and thereby access your clients’ personal information. This could even lead to a breach of GDPR, so make sure to take precautions. One of the first steps should be to ‘switch on’ or purchase an SSL cert. If you have a Go Sitebuilder subscription, SLL is completely free!

5. Launch date

Setting a date for your launch puts a timestamp on your goal – meaning it is easier to see what needs to be done, and when it needs to be done by, in order to launch on your desired date. This also gives you time to shout from the rooftops and create some buzz about what you’ve got going on.

6. Quality check

Testing your website ahead of time will alert you of any issues with the design or functionality of the site, allowing you to fix these issues before launching it to the general public. Just take a couple of minutes to go through the links, photos, and buttons. If you don’t have a Go Sitebuilder website, you may need to run tests on mobile devices too!

7. Sample testing

Select a small number of your existing clients, or even friends and family, to test the site. This gives you the opportunity to note any technical issues while you’re also receiving feedback, from which you can use to tweak and optimise your site. There’s nothing more helpful than feedback.

8. Prepare for the next few months ahead

It’s essential you put some time aside in the near future to keep content updated. It’s important to keep pages and contact details up to date but having a steady flow of new content, like blogs or new products, helps to drive more traffic to your site and keeps existing customers coming back!

If you still haven’t got your business online, now is the perfect time! Try Go Sitebuilder free for 14-days and see just how easy it is to get your website up and running.