Your business's website serves many purposes. It’s a virtual store, a marketing tool, and a communication platform, among other things. Most importantly, however, your website is the face of your business and plays a vital role in shaping the perception of your brand online. A well-designed website is one that is structured to be streamlined, responsive and intuitive to visitors—all of which are benchmarks of a strong user experience (UX). Moreover, visual and graphic design plays a significant role in shaping the user experience of your website and the overall impression of your brand.
If you haven’t invested in website design and visuals, then read on to learn why it’s crucial for the success of your business, and how to create a well-structured, visually appealing, and brand-consistent website.
Nail the First Impression
A well-designed website is often the first point of contact between potential customers and your business. In about a second or less, a visitor forms an opinion about whether they like your site.1
A website that is unprofessional, cluttered, or outdated can deter new customers. Your website should be thought of as your digital storefront and, as such, must be as inviting and visually appealing as your physical location to create a positive first impression.
Establish Credibility & Trust
Credibility is crucial, and a well-designed website that functions smoothly can significantly enhance your business's credibility and trustworthiness.
Customers are more likely to engage with and purchase from a business that maintains a clean, updated and well-designed website. In contrast, a poorly designed website with broken links, outdated content, or security issues can undermine trust and drive potential customers away.
Website User Experience (UX) Design Checklist
User experience (UX) is a critical aspect of web design and refers to providing visitors with a seamless and enjoyable browsing experience. A positive user experience encourages customers to stay on your site longer, explore its contents, and eventually book a service or buy something. On the other hand, a frustrating or confusing user experience will make them leave your site prematurely.
The rate at which people leave a site like this is called a bounce rate, and the worse a website’s architecture and UI (user interface) are, the higher its bounce rate will be. To avoid this, ensure that your website has the following:
Ease of Navigation
The layout of your website should guide visitors through the content logically, making it simple for them to find what they're looking for. Establishing a clear visual hierarchy helps users understand what's most important and guides them through the content of your web pages in the desired order.
Website headings, subheadings, and other visual elements are typically used to create a logical visual hierarchy. Some ways to establish visual cues include:
- Size: Making important elements larger helps users notice them first & more easily
- Color: Bright colors gain users’ attention
- Proximity: Placing page elements in a design next to each other suggests that they're related
- Space: Leaving space around certain elements highlights their importance, draws attention to them, and ensures the page isn’t too busy
- Texture: Playing with different texture elements can give your page depth & contrast
- Contrast: Contrasting colors & textures can create more eye-catching elements & a more interesting visual experience
- Alignment: Aligning different elements together makes them appear related within a design
Consistency
Consistency in design elements, such as button styles, form layouts, and headers makes users feel like they're navigating a cohesive website rather than a disjointed collection of pages.
Consistency also refers to using the same branding elements (more on those below) on your website that you use on social media, in marketing emails, at your actual storefront and on any physical marketing collateral you use. It can confuse customers if they access your website via your Facebook page and find a different version of your business’s logo and colors there.
Fast Load Times
This one is cut and dry. How fast is fast? The loading time benchmark for a webpage’s main content is 2.5 seconds or less, though people should be able to interact with a page at about .5 seconds.2 Slow load times will significantly increase your website’s bounce rate. Many things can slow a website down, including:
- Having too many images
- Images that are too large
- Using an outdated CMS (content management system)
- Using too much flash content
Mobile Responsiveness
Mobile responsiveness means that your website can adapt to various devices and screen sizes, especially smartphones and tablets. Why should you ensure that your website's design is well-suited for smaller screens? Because a large portion—more than half, in fact—of global web traffic comes from mobile devices3.
Making your website mobile friendly may involve reorganizing content, optimizing images, and simplifying navigation. Doing so also helps you meet search engine requirements. Google considers mobile-friendliness in its ranking algorithm, so a mobile-responsive website can improve your search engine rankings, which enhances your online visibility.
Accessibility
Designing your website with accessibility in mind isn’t a suggestion, it’s a necessity. According to guidelines from the World Wide Web Consortium (WWWC), your website’s content should be perceivable, operable, understandable and robust4. Some simple strategies for achieving these are:
- Providing alt text for images
- Using sufficient color contrast for text & backgrounds
- Ensuring that your website is navigable using keyboard inputs for those with disabilities
- Making your website compatible with screen reading software & similar tools
- Avoiding blinking & flashing elements, which can trigger seizures
Website Visual & Graphic Design Checklist
The visual and graphic design of a website helps create an appealing and functional digital environment.
The visual design of your website should reflect your brand identity, using consistent colors, fonts, and imagery. Through strategic design elements, color schemes, and content, a well-designed website can effectively communicate your brand's story. This helps visitors recognize your business and create a cohesive and memorable online presence.
Vagaro’s Design Services Team has helped many businesses create memorable branded assets, from custom logos to entire websites that capture your specific vision.
Color Palette
Colors can evoke emotions and convey information. Choose a color palette that aligns with your business type & brand, and that resonates with your target audience. Ensure that your color choices are consistent throughout your website for a cohesive look.
A strong website builder tool, like Vagaro MySite, enables you to customize colors, fonts, button styles and more.
Typography
Typography refers to the fonts you use. Your choice of fonts can greatly impact the readability and personality of your website, so you need to balance originality with practicality.
Use legible fonts for body text and consider more unique or stylized fonts for headings or branding elements. Ensure that your font size is readable on different devices.
While not a hard-and-fast rule, the Vagaro Design Team prefers Sans Serif fonts (Ariel, Helvetica, Calibri, Proxima Nova, etc.) for headline text and Serif fonts (Times New Roman, Georgia, Courier New, etc.) for body text. Script and handwriting-style fonts, they say, should be used sparingly and only on large headlines, and never in long-form paragraph text.
Business Logo
A custom logo is paramount because it functions as your calling card to the world. Like the website itself, a sleek, well-designed logo makes your business recognizable, trustworthy & professional to scores of potential clients.
People will come to associate your logo with your services, products & overall customer experience. In fact, this association is strengthened every time they see your logo, so be sure to have it front and center on your website.
Imagery
High-quality images and graphics capture and maintain users’ attention and complement the content throughout your site. The images in your service menu are particularly important, as they communicate value and help justify premium price points.
You’ll want to choose visuals that are:
- Relevant: They should reflect what you do/offer at your business
- Professional: They should be of high quality (no funky filters here) and appropriate
- Engaging: They should be interesting, colorful and/or action oriented. Dynamic action shots can be tricky but are necessary for gyms and fitness studios. Refer to this guide for taking quality fitness photos.
Be sure to optimize all images (including your logo) to ensure fast loading times and a smooth user experience, especially on mobile. A fast-loading site is essential for visitor retention and improving SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Large or unoptimized images, excessive animations, or complex design elements can slow down your site's loading times.
Pro Tip
Preferences vary concerning image size. The Design Services Team at Vagaro prefers 1500–2000px wide for hero banners, with regular images in the 400–600px range.
Commonly used image dimensions include5:
- Header Images: 1024px wide
- Background Images: 1920px wide by 1080px high
- Logo Images: 250px wide by 100px high
Interactive Elements
Interactive elements include things like sliders, carousels, accordions, or pop-up modals that engage users and present information in a dynamic way.
Remember that a little goes a long way, here. Overreliance on these elements can overwhelm your users.
White Space
What can help turn a real clunker into a sleek website? Nothing. White space, also called negative space, is the empty space between elements on a webpage.
White space is essential for visual clarity and user experience. It helps your content “breathe,” making it easier to read and digest. Underutilizing white space can make all your content and visuals overcrowded.
Call-to-Action (CTA) Design
CTAs (call to actions) are essential for guiding users toward desired actions, such as making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or contacting your business.
As it takes a potential client to the last segment of your sales funnel, you must design eye-catching and clear CTA links that stand out from the rest of the content. According to some statistics, CTA buttons bring about higher click rates than other types (text, designs) at 5.31%, higher than the average click through rate (CTR) of 4.23%6.
How to Test Your Website’s Design & Performance
User testing and analytics can supply insight into load times and bounce rates, and help you make design improvements to enhance the user experience.
There are several free resources available for testing your website’s performance, and they usually only require that you paste its URL. These include:
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Google’s PageSpeedInsights
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GT Metrix
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Pingdom
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Accessibility Checker
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SiteImprove
A well-designed website raises your business’s professionalism, trustworthiness, and visibility while significantly boosting sales revenue. If you haven’t already, do your business a huge favor and upgrade to a professional website builder. Choosing Vagaro MySite enables you to build sleek, navigable and mobile-friendly websites—or you can have Vagaro’s Design Services Team do it for you! It’s another way Vagaro empowers growing businesses to stay profitable and competitive. Sign up for your FREE 30-day trial and experience what else the Vagaro platform can do for your business!
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