The Dos and Don'ts of Building Your Own Website Featured.jpg

The Dos and Don'ts of Building Your Own Website

You don’t want to build just any website for your business; you want to build the right website for your business. After all, what good is a website if it’s not visible in the organic search results, not accessible to smartphone users, or provides such a poor user experience that no one sticks around to learn about what you have to offer?

Don’t get me wrong, building your own website is a great option that’s right for many business owners. And, thanks to professional, easy-to-use design templates, like the ones you’ll find with Websites 360®, anyone can build their own website, even if they have little to no website design experience.

When you’re designing your business website, it’s important to get it right. That means learning what to do — and what not to do — while building your website.

The dos and don’ts of DIY website design

Do choose a responsive design template

Far more people have smartphones than laptops or desktops these days, and even people who do have actual computers use their mobile phones all the time.

With so many mobile users out there, it’s imperative that your website is able to perform well on any device. And, since it’ no longer makes sense to have a separate version of your website for mobile and desktop, your best option is to choose a responsive design template for your business website.

What is responsive design?

A website, built to be responsive, will automatically reconfigure itself based on the size of the screen it’s being viewed on. This ensures that your users will have full functionality of your website, as well as enjoy the full aesthetic experience, regardless of whether they’re visiting it with a desktop, laptop, tablet or smartphone.

Choosing a responsive design template is an essential part of building a mobile-friendly website, but it’s not the only thing you’ll need to think about.

You’ll also want to make sure that your text is large and clear enough for mobile users to read, and you’ll want to make sure that your buttons are spaced out far enough for your mobile visitors to click on them on a small touchscreen.

Don’t make your website complicated to navigate

A little creativity can go a long way toward making your website stand out, especially if you started building it with a design template. However, there are some areas where it’s better to stay the course than to go your own way, and the navigation of your site is absolutely one of them.

Website navigation affects how easy it is for your visitors to get from point A to point B, and it won’t help anyone if it’s complicated or difficult to use.

Choosing to go with a tried and true navigation, like a classic menu navigation, will provide your users with an experience they’re familiar with and know how to use.

Do keep your design consistent

The design of your website should reflect your branding, and it should be consistent across every page of your website. Regardless of whether someone lands on your home page, about us page, product or service page, or any other page, you want them to be able to immediately recognize that it belongs to your brand.

One way to ensure that your branding stays consistent is to put together your own style guide as you start designing your website. A few of the different elements you’ll want to include in your style guide should be colors, typography, imagery, and tone of voice.

Learn more about what to include in your brand guidelines and why, by checking out my previous post.

Don’t forget about page speed when designing your website

Remember back in the days of the dial-up connection, when you could make a cup of coffee or a snack in the time it took a page to load? Those days are over, and people today expect near-immediate load times. Visitors to your website will decide within a few seconds if they want to stick around and keep exploring, and if those precious seconds are wasted loading your pages, you’ll lose them.

There are so many things that can affect page speed. Here are a few of them:

  • Choosing a cheap web host - When it comes to web hosting, you often get what you pay for, and if a web hosting provider is cheap, there’s probably a reason for it. Cheap web hosts have a reputation for being unreliable, so make sure that you do your research before selecting one.
  • Large, uncompressed images - Apart from unreliable hosting, large images are the number one thing that slows a web page down. Imagery is a must-have design element, but it’s important to compress and optimize images to ensure that they won’t slow down your website.
  • Failing to utilize caching techniques - By using caching techniques, like server-side caching and browser caching, you can drastically speed up your website and improve performance.

Check out my previous blog to learn more about improving site speed.

Do design your website with your CTA in mind

Calls to action (CTAs) are what tell your visitors what to do next when they’re interested in learning more about your products or services, or when they’re ready to make a purchase or schedule an appointment.

There might be a number of different CTAs throughout each page of your site, but most websites have one main CTA, and that’s what you should focus on when you design your website.

Everything about your website should point to what your visitors should do next. Not only does that mean writing content with the CTA in mind, but it means that you should leave plenty of white space around each CTA on your page.

If there’s too much clutter around your CTAs, it can make them difficult to spot, but the strategic use of white space can really help them stand out.

Start designing your own business website with the Websites 360 website builder today!

Originally published on 4/21/20