Your company’s website is an important marketing tool no matter what industry you’re in. Your website is the first thing many of your customers see when researching your brand, so it’s always best to make a good impression with your web design. Whether you use your website to sell products or generate leads, all businesses need a professional web design.

Poorly designed, clunky, and cluttered websites are eyesores and can prevent you from making a sale. Good website design is key to helping your business grow, and providing users with a good user experience can improve your sales process. Here are the top tips for improving your company’s web design.

1. Optimize for Mobile

The way people view websites has changed drastically over the years. Many people don’t spend hours sitting in front of a desktop anymore; in fact, there are tons of different screen sizes you should optimize for, but the most important is mobile. More and more people are starting to use mobile devices for everything, especially researching companies and shopping.

When building a website, you must optimize it for mobile visitors. If you don’t, you could be losing valuable customers because they can’t easily navigate your website on their phones. Ultimately, if your website isn’t optimized for mobile, you’re behind on the times, which will deter even more customers away from you.

Your website design must be responsible and able to adapt to different screen sizes and shapes. Not only should your design adapt to different screen sizes, but it should be easy to navigate on mobile.

2. Consider Landing Pages

Landing pages are great sales pages that can help your business succeed. Unlike a homepage, landing pages have a clear, distinct purpose and focus on a single call to action to help convert visitors into customers.

Every unique marketing product and offer should have its own landing page on your website. Depending on your resources, you can even create landing pages for different audiences. The landing page design should be simple and have minimal distractions with a clear call to action.

3. Add Social Proof

You could have a beautifully designed website, but if customers have never heard of you and you haven’t started building trust, it will be much harder to influence someone to buy your products and services. Social proof is testimonials and reviews from previous customers that demonstrate the value of your business. Reviews on your website can help convince someone to buy, as long as those reviews come from real people. Need inspiration? Check out the review section on Shareable for Hires’ homepage. They currently have one clear review that supports the company’s overall value proposition.

When considering where to place testimonials, consider prominent spots, such as the homepage or individual product pages.

4. Remove Distractions

Some page elements can distract users from the value of your company and the messages you want to convey. Complex animals, stock photos, and different colors are all examples of distracting elements that can make your website confusing for visitors.

Remember, your visitors have a limited attention span, especially if they’re viewing your website on their phones when they could be doing just about anything else. Therefore, your website must make it clear what the user can expect on every page of your website. If your website design is confusing and distracting, it’s not very clear.

5. Use Calls to Action

Your website visitors always need to be told where to go next to help improve their experience. Once your visitors land on your website, they should be guided around through simple navigation and clear calls to action. People looking at websites tend to be lazy, so it’s always best to guide them through your website and avoid them struggling to find something they are looking for.

You can place the call to action in strategic places to make it easy for users to find what they’re looking for. Ideal places include the top right of the navigation, below important sections that have next steps, and at the bottom of the website. Of course, the most important calls to action should be towards the top of the page, but you might have lower-priority calls to action at the bottom to help customers contact you if they need help.

You must use calls to action strategically. For example, asking someone to buy a product and service before they’re ready to buy will force them to take no action. Instead, you should aim to understand the buyer’s journey and serve them calls to action based on where they are in that journey. For example, if your visitors are on your blog, they’re likely still learning about different products and services, so trying to sell them might not have any effect.

6. Organize Navigation

Your site navigation will help visitors find what they’re looking for, even if it’s not completely clear to them when they land on your website. Navigation is your visitors’ map to help them go where they need to go. However, confusing or disorganized navigation can force your visitors to search around your website too much before ultimately leaving because they couldn’t find what they were looking for. Likewise, overstuffing navigation, using confusing hypertexts, and poor organization will always make it more difficult for customers to find important pages on your site.

7. Make Your Website Scrollable

Years ago, many companies didn’t want their homepages to scroll because they were afraid nobody would make an effort to scroll. However, as screen sizes changed and more people started using their phones for web browsing, scrolling became a necessity. Instead of throwing all of the important information above the fold, you can use your home page to correctly space out and organize information to help users understand what they can expect from the website.

Elements to use on your website can include your brand messaging, videos, social proof, and an overview of your products and services.

Final Thoughts
Designing a website isn’t about your business at all; it’s about how customers will interact with your business. If your website doesn’t help visitors find what they’re looking for, they won’t convert. Therefore, focusing on user experience is key to improving your web design.