Key elements of good website design

Key design elements for small and medium sized businesses

For small and medium sized businesses, your website is one of your most important assets.

You want to present your business as being professional and reliable and build ‘trust’ right from the very first impression and engage your clients and customers. Enter WEBSITE DESIGN. Good website design significantly impacts your ability to generate new leads and attract those sought-after new client enquiries.

So, let’s start with…what is good website design?

1. Simply, it’s website design that works

At first glance, it’s the way your website looks and the effect it has on you. A well laid out page will be pleasing to look at and draw you in, allowing your eye to flow around the page as you quickly pick up key promotional messages and headings and find what you are looking for. So, while the page looks appealing, it is also hard at work taking you (the reader) on a journey through the page so you can easily see what’s on offer. It has to be designed well. This is an aspect I value at Aztera Marketing. With clever website design, visual elements like colour, panels and highlights are used to ping out key points you don’t want your clients to overlook. Good website design help your clients to quickly and easily navigate around your web pages. While anyone can BUILD a web page, good design will make your website WORK.

2.The look of your website needs to reflect your business

Another aspect of good web design is branding and what we call the ‘look and feel’. Your website should have a specific look and feel related to your business – it might be bold and strong, or fresh and light – or anything in between. It should reflect you and your business and be attractive to your potential customers and clients. Your branding, fonts and colours have an influence, too. Your website designer should be considering all of this, when developing your website design.

3.Good effective use of white space

Why are some websites so easy to navigate and look around? It’s all about good use of white space. Just giving some white space around each element has an effect – it’s easy on the eye and allows the text and images to breath. What you leave out can be as important as what you put in! It’s all part of good design.

4. It assists and supports the communication of key marketing messages

The role of good website design is to support and enhance effective communication of your key marketing messages. For a strong sales focused website you need to consider the key products and services you want your clients to purchase. Order and page placement can significantly impact on the performance of sales and online enquiries.

5. Remember…less is more

You don’t always have to say everything, all at once in one place. Good messaging will highlight what you want to talk about, provide the key information and offer a link to find out more. It’s all about breaking up the text into manageable bites so nothing gets lost or buried. Have you ever landed on a page that had big blocks of dense text all the same size with only a few headings? You probably won’t remember because you left the website immediately! It’s all avoidable with good website design.

Key components of good website design

Below are images that demonstrate and support our key website design principles. Keep in mind for all of these, that good marketing messaging, content order, headline text, feature boxes and messaging is key to making the finished result the success that it becomes. Good design supports good quality page content.

Key design elements include:

  • Strong supporting page images that convey and support the products and/or services that you sell.
  • Clear heading text which effectively communicates and supports easy reading of the content for that section.
  • Good use of white space to let the page read flow and assist good on page readability.
  • Use of strong promotional message box/es high up on the page, with a clear offer.
  • Good use of ‘call now’ and other ‘call to action’ buttons.
  • Good use of on page links, helping your client to find other supporting details and pages that you have linked to, to assist the user’s experience.
  • Small on-page contact forms, with minimal fields required to be completed, prior to submitting.

What I commonly observe with website design…

At Aztera Marketing, I often get new and referred clients coming to me because their website is not generating sales and leads at the level the business needs.

This can be a result of:

  • A previously poorly designed website, that doesn’t have a clear structure or has a clunky, or ‘over done’ design.
  • Poor or no use of marketing messages, feature boxes, and call to action buttons, leaving a website visitor confused and not sure of what the business offers.
  • A website that clearly lacks well-thought out design, use of space, clear heading structures, and effective page layout.
  • Poor use of on-page imagery and photos which do nothing to communicate what your business offers and the quality of your products/services.
  • An overuse of text, all bunched up with no clear headings or white space, and poor use of bullet points to highlight any key points.

How we can help | Quality website design Wellington

We specailise in good website design and create affordable, good-looking, hard-working websites. We’d love to help you, too.

With our expertise what you get is:

  • Customised design & layout:  A fully customised look with each individual page designed to effectively present and communicate your brand and services.
  • Expertise in communication:  Layout and design crafted and developed by an experienced website and graphic designer.
  • Quality layout & design features: A well developed website built on WordPress using a premium level theme, delivering greater design and layout features.
  • Proven capabilities: Our expertise can be seen with the range of websites we have built, for a wide range of NZ based businesses.  View these in our Gallery.
  • Focused on sales & results: Most importantly, we don’t just build a website, we custom design each one keeping in mind all key design elements and messaging so you get the best results.
  • Useful links: View some of our built websites in our Gallery and check out our website prices.

Our website design & marketing services | Wellington

We help a range of businesses with their website, online, and digital marketing activities. In essence, we provide full wrap-around marketing and website support, including technical website support. Our services are tailored to each of our individual client’s requirements.

Contact Us or Request a Free Consultation to discuss how we can help your business. We are Wellington based and support clients throughout the greater Wellington region and NZ wide.

Read our Post on “Why Good Website Design is so Important”