Top 5 things to start doing on your website, right now!

These days, it seems like everyone is a web designer. We are constantly told, through TV and media advertising, that we don’t need to know how to code or know anything about website design to successfully build a website and have it bring in revenue immediately. Every year, hundreds of thousands of people buy into this idea, and every year, just as many websites fail spectacularly. The only true winners are the companies that sell you their web-building software. Not to mention the ongoing hosting costs and, in many cases, having your domain name held hostage if you let them register it for you in the first place.

So, this article is not intended to school you on the above but, more to the point, to help you at least get a good idea of what you should be doing in order to make your website shine from a design point of view. It’s the design flow that we use here at 32 Digital®.

So, let’s dive in: Here are my top 5 tips for you to start implementing right away.

ONE: Sliders are dead

The problem:

I am sure you know what I mean by this. The home page of your website, underneath the navigation bar, has an image with text on it that slides to another and then another and so on.

People now treat these animations (sliders) as adverts and instantly dismiss your website. If they do not see them as such, they will never see slide two, let alone slide ten, that you have loaded and ready to go due to limited attention spans.

• Sliders use large amounts of bandwidth that can slow down your page speed.
• Sliders are not really optimised for mobile devices.
• Sliders can make it appear that you are not sure what to focus on.

The solution:

Design a static hero image (the name given to this element) that is eye-catching and includes a good call to action in your text.

A very simple example of a header with a call to action.

TWO: Navigation bar

The problem:

I see this all the while, and it is so easily fixable. You have your main navigation bar with links like Contact, About and Solutions. Contact who? About who, What solutions?

The solution:

Change these simply to Contact Us, About our company or About Us and change Solutions to Services we offer.

• Make your navigation links as descriptive as possible to avoid confusion.
• Use dropdown lists to include more pages, but don’t overdo it.
• Try to position your navigation bar at the top of the page. This is where most people will expect to find it.
• Keep the number of navigation links to around 6 or 7 links so as not to overcrowd your navigation bar.

THREE: Social media links (Invite your visitors to immediately leave your website).

The problem:

Yep, you heard me correctly. And you are probably already doing it. I’m talking about placing your social media icons at the top of your web page or in the main navigation bar. Think about it. It is hard enough to get a visitor to come to your website in the first place, but upon loading your page, you are basically saying to them, “Hey, don’t bother looking through my website. Go to our social media instead”. Crazy!

The solution:

• Put your social media links in the footer of your website. These days, everybody knows that’s where the links will be.
• Move your social media links to the bottom of your page.
• Don’t make your social media links too big.
• Never use your social media links at the top of your web pages.

FOUR: Too many fonts

The problem:

It may look cool to you to have six different fonts, but it leads to a right old mess for the aesthetics of your website.

The solution:

• Choose two fonts. One for your headings and one for your paragraph text. At the most, you could have three, but try to stick to two.
• Too many font styles can look very messy.
• Your webpage has to load your fonts, which can negatively impact your page speed.
• Try to use a web-safe font. These fonts will usually be pre-installed on devices, which helps reduce load times.

Using our page example from above, look at how the page changes by using multiple bad fonts. The fonts I use here came from a website that I found online!

FIVE: Learn about SEO (search engine optimisation).

The problem:

You will only have basic SEO tools at your disposal with a website builder, and you may think that by entering some basic information, your website will be ready to be received by the world, but this just isn’t so.

The solution:

Take some time and learn how to do it properly. There are loads of great resources out there, like SEMrush and Diib. Getting your SEO right is the most important thing that you can do, and while the subject of SEO is extensive and sometimes very complicated, you can still pick up the basics and incorporate them into your site.

A good resource can be found over at ahrefs.

Putting it all together::