You probably are here because you want to improve the website you already have, or you’re trying to figure out what you should do for your new site.
What is web design? Web design is the umbrella term for the process of creating a website. This includes the website layout, the production of content, graphic design. Sometimes web development and web design are used interchangeably, but web design is technically a subcategory under web development.
Either way, it’s important to know the best practices of small business web design before you launch your site. Customers have become much more knowledgeable and far less patient regarding sites that don’t follow the standards for web design in today’s high-demand tech world.
Web Design Best Practices
Here are some important factors when it comes to the best web design best practices that you should practice whenever you can.
- Web Design: Branding Consistency
- Web Design: Importance of Logo on Your Website
- Web Design: Importance of Market Position
- Web Design: Including a Strong Call-to-Action
- Web Design: Website Goal Creation
- Web Design: Factors that Influence a High-Converting Page
- Web Design: Quick Load Time
- Web Design: Content Delivery Network
- Web Design: Correct Image Formats
- Web Design: Address Cache Issues
- Web Design: Evaluate Plugins
- Web Design: HTTP Keep-Alive Response Headers
- Web Design: Enable Compression
- Web Design: Search Engine Optimization
- Web Design: Schema
- Web Design: XML
- Web Design: Mobile Friendliness
- Web Design: Desktop vs. Mobile
- Web Design: Responsive Design
- Web Design: Contact Info
- Web Design: Back to Top Buttons
- Web Design: Retargeting Via Email Marketing
- Web Design: Sync to Website
- Web Design: Present Icons
- Web Design: Connect Your Social Media
- Web Design: Quality Images
- Web Design: Capitalizing with Icons
- Web Design: Decrease Bounce Rate
- Web Design: Chatbots
- Web Design: Color Scheme
- Web Design: Brand Personality
If you have a website, hopefully, you understand the importance of branding, especially in terms of designing a website. If you do not have a website but you are thinking about putting a website together, you need to remember that there is a difference between marketing products and branding your company.
Marking or advertising products involves talking about the important aspects of a product or service, illustrating ways that your product is better than your competitors, and promoting it on different platforms. This is very important to your success. But branding is more involved and requires you to talk about more than products and services. With branding, you are analyzing and evaluating every aspect of your brand and the image that you want to project to the world.
Branding can include a wide number of digital assets including photos, graphics on your page, podcasts and video, logos, and anything else you decide to use to promote your brand.
Some famous entrepreneurs are so focused on branding that they believe it is the most important component of any website. Daymond John says in his online webinars that you should be able to describe your brand in 3-5 words. He believes you must make your brand so prevalent that your presence is on every platform where your customers are.
In his famous book, The Brand Within, (I have an autographed copy), Daymond talks about the consistency of branding and how hard you should work at your branding. Your branding is the “face of your business” to the public. They will judge your value based on how well you market your brand, not your products.
So, when you start planning your website and building it, you need to keep your brand image in mind. Everything you do should help you weave your company image and branding within your website.
Also, you need to imagine your logo, graphics, and other digital assets on other platforms, as well. Think about how your logo will look on your social media pages, your blog, and other platforms. You need to find a way to keep your consistency so that people will easily recognize your brand no matter what channel the