How to make your website design appealing to your customers

The key to website design that is appealing for users is simplicity. The design of the page should not compete with the copy, which is what you really want your customers to focus on. With this in mind, here are our top tips for good, effective website design:

1) Don’t annoy your customers!

How many times have you clicked on a website, tried to read the text and found that it’s impossible because a pop-up window has opened? This is annoying for your customers. As soon as a pop-up appears the majority of users will simply navigate away from the website. Yedit website designs will never include pop-up windows, we want your customers to stay in your site and read what you have to say!

Another sure fire way to get on your customers’ nerves is to include any of the following: background music, animated images, large images as backgrounds- these things will all make the website page load more slowly (especially if your customer is using a dial-up internet connection) and distract from the message of the web page. Studies, user experiences and common sense all say the same thing: include these features and immediately lose customers.

At Yedit we work to make your website design as appealing as possible to your customers and know not to include sound or animation. If you would like a particular image incorporated into the background of a page, we can simplify it and make it work for your design, rather than against it- the fussier the background, the less likely people will be able to read the text on top of it.

2) Make sure your copy is professional

Your website is the window to your business for web users and therefore, you need to convey the fact that you are professionals, experts in your particular field. This image can quickly be destroyed if your website copy includes spelling mistakes and obvious repetition (keyword stuffing). Checking and double-checking every page of your website copy to ensure that it reads well and does not include any mistakes is a vital process in your website development.

At Yedit we check all copy submitted to us by you before the website goes live, thus avoiding this pitfall. Keyword stuffing is the term used when people include the same key words or phrases in a web page again and again, without any thought to the relevance or readability of the site. At Yedit, we will help you to identify your key words (which are the key to unlocking good search engine rankings) and suggest ways in which you can include them in your copy for each web page, without getting into Keyword stuffing territory.

The main rule to remember with regards to key words is to get them into your copy in a relevant place, above all the text should be readable and make sense to the user or they will navigate off the page regardless of your search engine rankings. At Yedit we also provide a copy writing service, whereby we can write your copy for you ensuring that it includes keywords in meaningful and relevant copy- contact us for further information of you are interested in this service.

3) Make sure your customer can read what you have written

It is all very well having perfectly written copy, but what if your customers can’t read it? The fonts used in your website should be simple and easy to use on computer screens with low resolution. The simple fonts are the best, and at Yedit we recommend either Arial or Verdana. Some people like to use Comic Sans, as it is seen as a ‘playful’ font, however it has been the centre of controversy in recent years with graphic design groups voting it as the most annoying font in use and attempting to ban it, therefore we would recommend that you steer clear of using this font and opt for one of the plainer two that we have suggested.

Where you are unsure about the size of a font, remember that people have to be able to read them, so don’t go any smaller than 10pt. At the same time, huge fonts can look amateurish, as can too much variation in font size or style. The point to remember here is simplicity (again!). Keep your fonts simple: stick to one font for the whole website, switch between two, perhaps three sizes of font (a different one for headings and main body text) and that should be the extent of your variation.

On this matter, it is important to ensure that the colour of the font can be read easily on a computer screen. In order to ensure this, choose fonts colours that have a high contrast with the background colour (e.g. black or dark purple on white). Some colours offer little contrast and can be almost impossible to read, try it for yourself by writing red text on a dark blue background and you’ll see what we mean.

4) Final things to note:

• Avoid typing more than a few words in ALL CAPS. Your customers will read capital letters as if you are shouting the words- this is fine if you are trying to emphasise a couple of words, but no more than this.

• Never use more than one exclamation point. One will do the trick, any more looks amateurish.

• Use the spell check which comes as part of Yedit Xpress every time that you make a change to your website.

• Avoid underlining words if they are not links. People associate underlined words with links, if they are not links this can lead to confusion.

• Make links either blue or underlined, or both. Users should be able to spot links and click on them if they want to- don’t hide them in the text, make them visible.

• Ensure that your contact information is visible on every page as part of the template design, menu, header or footer.
Your initial website design will be completed by Yedit’s professional website designers so your site will adhere to all of the rules noted above. When you decide to add pages or change copy just keep these golden rules in mind and your website design will remain user-friendly and effective.