Six Tips for Creating a Flawless Website

Your website can be one of your greatest assets. Part of what can make or break a website is great and valuable content attracts visitors. This in turn creates a loyal audience that likes and trusts you. Great content isn’t everything, though.

What if you never attract the attention of that audience? What if your site visitors take one look at your valuable content and they leave because your website looks boring, bland, and substandard? You’ll lose your target audience at hello, and your content won’t take root. Design is crucial. Aesthetics matters. A flawless design creates a welcoming first impression. It engages and draws in your visitors so they engage with your great content.

Do you want to create an appetite for your content? Here are six tips to make your website flawless.

Think about Your Visitors

A flawless design starts with a clear understanding of who you’re targeting. If you want to pick colors, images, and typefaces that resonate with your target audience, you need to understand them and know what they’ll respond best to.

So what is important to know about your target market?

Preferably, you need to know their age group, gender, and education level. Also, knowing what motivates them, their beliefs, and other companies they prefer buying from can help you create a website that resonates with your target audience.

Keep Your Fonts Simple

One thing that makes a website look great is readability. This doesn’t mean you should use just one font. However, don’t overdo it, and aim to maintain just one or two text elements within the same font set.

Don’t be afraid to experiment with fonts to see what resonates more with your target audience.

Remember, stylized and dramatic fonts are hard to read and they make your website look substandard. It may seem “cool” but it’s best to stick to a simple font. The purpose of font is to make your content stand out and give your words personality; this means that illegible font will hurt your website.

Use Colors That Make Sense to Your Target Audience

Knowing who your target audience is will give you an idea of what colors will resonate with them. But as you start out, pick two main colors to represent your brand. Many studies have been done on the role of color in commerce. Try to choose colors that make sense for your product that also set you apart from your competitors. If you’re not sure what to pick, start by looking at the consumer goods your target audience already buys. What colors appeal to them?

Begin by looking around for color combinations that are being used to sell to your target market and take inspiration from them.

Tell Your Story Using Appealing Images

Finding a good image that works with your content can be a challenge, because you need to write your article first and then look for images that work perfectly with that article. So, this feels like one more thing you have to do.

However, the effort is worth it. You don’t want your words to sit lifeless and lonely on the page, so it’s good to pair them with a compelling image.

A great image gives readers an invitation to engage with your content. If you pick an attractive image that creates a bit of curiosity, it’ll draw readers into your headline and the first paragraph of your post.

Order Your Information Hierarchically

Visual hierarchy helps readers to navigate through your website easily and absorb information in the order you prefer.

Begin by looking at the information on your web pages. What do you want visitors to see first? Perhaps it’s your site’s name. What do you want them to notice next? Maybe it’s your headline or the image you’ve used in your first post.

Once they notice the name of your site and you’ve drawn their attention into your content, then what do what them to see? What action do you want them to take?

Make the most crucial information bolder, brighter, and larger. And give the important information some breathing room by adding white space; this draws attention.

Make the next-most-crucial information less bold, less bright, and smaller. And as you go down the visual hierarchy ladder, remember that the less important the information is, the less visual “weight” it should have.

Pull Everything Together with a Brand Style Guide

Now you have the right colors, fonts, attractive images, and visual hierarchy to create a flawless website. Then what?

Maintain the consistency using a simple style guide. And it doesn’t have to be a complex ten-page document. Use this advice:

• Open a Word document and note your official colors.
• Create a file name for your official logo or header artwork.
• Note the resources for images so that you’ll know where to find attractive images in future.
• Keep adding to this document as you continue making more design decisions about your website.

This is a great document to share with your team or any contractors that you work with so that you can maintain a consistency with your brand.

After creating a flawless website, keep readers coming back for more by serving valuable content consistently.