Having a well-designed website is essential if you want to make sure that you impress your visitors and that your site performs as well as it should in the search engines. Today, the barrier to entry for getting a website up and running is lower than ever before. You don’t need to be a skilled developer to keep a website ticking over, because modern content management tools handle a lot of the administrative burden for you.
In spite of this, a lot of big-name brands have websites that are difficult to use and navigate. Their websites are overly busy, with an unclear visual hierarchy, difficult to distinguish colours, too many different fonts, or simply pages that take too long to load.
Design Matters
These mistakes are all easy enough to fix, or to avoid in the first place if you work with a good website designer, and yet it’s not just the smaller brands that are making them. Even top-ranking accounting firms are lagging behind when it comes to things like mobile friendliness, which means that they face ranking penalties from Google, as the search engine is putting an increasing emphasis on mobile friendliness as a part of its ranking algorithm.
Video game companies such as Trion often use huge intro videos and obscure puzzle-style navigation, something that flies in the face of conventional wisdom. They get away with this for their game-specific pages not because the design works, but because their demographic is willing to accept it. Notice that their corporate website is much cleaner and simple, and relies more on text and white space.
Reaching a Local Audience
As mobile devices become more commonplace, and local search becomes more important, brand owners need to focus on ensuring that their website is as easy as possible to navigate. Good contrasting colours and clearly readable fonts will help to ensure that users can access the information that they need, regardless of what device they are on. Working with a Cheltenham web design firm such as http://www.ma-design.biz will help to ensure that you get the best possible rankings in the local SERPs.
As a smaller brand owner it is important that you take care of your visitors. Your website will leave a lasting impression on them.