12 Expert Design Tips That Will Make Your Professional Website Stand Out and Gain Traffic
With the popularity of the internet being at an all-time high, and the growth of online businesses. It’s a concrete fact when one says a professional website is mandatory. It’s literally a must-have. We are no longer in the day and time where having a website is optional. However, with so much competition out here you have to be certain that your website will stand out and gain traffic. Otherwise, it’s a pointless investment. How does one make his or her website look more professional? There are a lot of layers to answering this question. Some of them are having a quality template for your design, the perfect color scheme, displaying trustworthiness and more. To get our full list of 12 expert design tips that will make your professional website stand out, continue reading below.
1) Quality Web Design Template
Arguably the most important factor to making a professional website stand out from the crowd, is selecting a quality template for your web design. A top-level template sets the tone for your website and makes it easier for everything else to fall into place. Don’t be hesitant about having your website designed on a template. Don’t fall into the false impression that a template will make your site appear amateur or cheap. Approximately 70% of professional websites uses a template. The key is to make sure your web designer selects a quality template that will enhance the your website and attract users. To ensure you or the web designer you hire selects the proper template, make sure you’re following the suggestions listed below:
- Select a template in your industry – If you have an interior design or real estate business, select a template within that industry. Don’t choose a hospital template theme for a real estate website.
- Make sure you template is clean and smooth. Something that’s visually appealing but also doesn’t have too much going on.
- Be sure that your template isn’t outdated.
How do I find the perfect website template?
If you’re wondering how to find or access the perfect template to start your professional website, there are a few avenues you can take. You can:
- Hire a professional web designer who has a license agreement with a website builder company such as Elementor, Astras, etc. that gives them access to a variety of website themes they can choose from for your business.
- Purchase your website theme yourself directly from a website builder company
- Select a free theme that comes with the content management system your site will be built on such as WordPress, Wix and more.
2) Establish Voice You Want for Your Website
Now you must establish the voice you want for your website. Every professional website and brand has a voice, and that voice should be reflected throughout your digital marketing. Do you want the tone of your website to be upscale, corporate, youthful, upbeat, etc.? Establish this and then allow it to play a role and everything you implement into your professional website. Handmade home decor online store, Charisma Home Decor is great at setting a fun and creative tone for their website that they also implement in every aspect of their brand. Below are some further detailed examples on how to establish a voice for your website.:
- If you have a real estate business, decide if you want your website and company voice to be a corporate, upscale or more down to earth real estate business.
- For a restaurant website, you may want to choose your voice based on which dishes you’ll be serving. If you have a restaurant that specializes in soul food, maybe you want your website voice to be wholesome, nurturing and family orientated.
- If you’re creating a clothing website that sells modern fashion, it would be good to have a youthful and up to date voice.
Whatever tone you decide for your website be sure it corresponds with the industry you’re in and your business brand.
3) Select Your Color Scheme
Once you set the tone for your website, you’re now ready to select your color scheme. You want to make sure the colors of your website matches the tone, message and brand of your business. The best way to accomplish this is to understand the psychology of colors in marketing, and what each color represents. For example, if you have a home decor website sells creative products and has an upbeat voice. Then you would probably want bright and lively colors such as red, orange, yellow and blue. If you have a professional website for upscale handbags colors such as black, white, gold and purple are great choices. The exact color scheme you choose for your site is ultimately up to you. Just be sure to select 3-4 colors that work well together and represent the tone of your brand. Below is a list of how marketing works with each color and the different emotions common colors are associated with:
Color Psychology for Company Branding:
- Black = Modern, sophistication and also supreme confidence. This can work for a variety of business types.
- White = Professional and modern style. Can also be used for multiple businesses
- Gray = Wise, corporate and neutral. Great as a primary or secondary color for a company website.
- Gold = Luxury, royalty and glamour. Works well with a lot of e-commerce websites, especially those selling upscale items.
- Red = Passion and excitement. Ideal for a restaurant, food or performing arts website.
- Blue = Trust, peace and calm. Great for a finance or healthcare website.
- Yellow = Optimism, creativity and youth. Perfect for a children’s website such as a daycare or face painting business.
- Purple = Royalty, spirituality and femininity. Ideal for a holistic, all natural product line professional website
- Orange = High energy, enthusiasm and creativity. Perfect for a bakery, camp or any youth related business website.
- Green = Growth, sustainability and calmness. Ideal for an eco-related, herbal or cultural website.
- Brown = Nature, wisdom and wholesomeness. Great for an agricultural, health of cooked food website.
When choosing any of these colors based on their psychology for your brand. Also keep in mind the various shades within a certain color and how they can represent different things. Another thing to remember is your professional website is going to have about 3-5 colors in your scheme, so be prepared to combine tones together. Whatever colors you come up with just make sure to properly represent your brand, speak to your audience, works well together and is a reflection of you.
4) Choosing Your Typography
The next step to making your professional website stand out is to choose your typography. Typography is the style of a font that’s on a web page. Different fonts can represent different tones of a website. For example, a more glamorous, upscale website that desires to look professional may use the “Georgia” web font. A professional website that has a highly corporate presence would use a more standard font such as “Arial” or “Verdana.” When selecting your web font be sure you or your professional web designer use fonts that are web safe and guaranteed to show up on all web browsers properly. With web fonts not all of them look the same on every browser. But safe web fonts are web fonts that do appear to render the same and display properly across all browsers and devices. According to W3 Schools, below is the list of the most safest web fonts for creating a professional website:
- Arial (sans-serif)
- Verdana (sans-serif)
- Tahoma (sans-serif)
- Trebuchet MS (sans-serif)
- Times New Roman (serif)
- Georgia (serif)
- Garamond (serif)
- Courier New (monospace)
- Brush Script MT (cursive)
5) Eye-Catching Hero Section
The hero section of a website is the top section of a website that grabs the user’s attention before scrolling down. It helps to set the tone for your website and brand. It’s also suppose to influence the visitors to stay on your site and want to learn more. Most hero sections consist of the either some of most of the following below:
- A banner image
- A large video
- An interactive banner
- Large heading
- Call to action button
To decide how to set up your hero section and how you’re going to convince users to stay on your website think about what the ultimate goal is for your professional website. Also view websites that are in your industry and reference some of them as an example. Don’t duplicate it 100%, but you can always view similar website to get an idea. Also seek the expertise of your web designer to come up with a hero section guaranteed to make your website stand out.
6) Show You’re Trustworthy
One of the best ways to show you have a professional website for your brand is to display how trustworthy your business is. It doesn’t matter how catchy or visually appealing your site is. If you don’t have certain credentials to prove your services are legit, your website won’t be considered professional. There are several must-have features all professional websites should have to exhibit their trustworthiness. The primary ones are listed below:
- Company logo
- Company email and/or phone number – in the header or footer or even both
- Social media icons – in header or footer or both areas
- SSL certificate – An SSL certificate is a digital certificate that authenticates a website’s identity and enables an encrypted connection. It lets users know your website is secured and safe to use.
- Copyright logo in footer
- My account and/ or wish list icon for e-commerce sites
- Credit card/ payment acceptance logo for e-commerce sites
- Newsletter sign up
There are always more details you can add to your website to make it trustworthy and appear more professional. However, the items listed above are a must-have and the website shouldn’t be launched without it. The only item listed that you could get away with no having right away is the newsletter sign up. However, you should be working on creating a newsletter and then adding a sign up form to your website right away if you don’t have it in time for launch.
7) Clean Navigation
Another feature to be sure your professional website has that will help it stand out is a clean navigation menu. The navigation menu is the list of all your web pages which allows users to move from one page of your website to the next. For user experience and search engine purposes you want your nav menu to be as smooth and hassle free as possible. Meaning you want the pages on your website to be listed in your menu in a way where users can easily access them. If you have any internal pages that lie within your main pages, you want to be sure that they’re properly nested inside the right page. For example, if you have a law firm website and you have a “services” page. You may have subpages that specify each service such as “family law”, “entertainment law”, etc. You would want those pages to be nested underneath the “services” tab on the navigation menu. This makes sense for the users and the search engines when they crawl your website. If you have an e-commerce website and you have subcategories for particular products, you definitely want to make sure the subpages have the correct parent page.
8) Multiple Ways to Get to Services/ Products
Another important feature for making a website professional and attractive is to have multiple ways people can access your services and products on your website. Yes you want visitors to be able to get to any page from your navigation menu. However, you don’t want your nav menu to be the only way one can access a page on your website, especially an important page. If you have an e-commerce website you may have your product category pages listed in the header on the nav menu. However, as people scroll down your home page there should also be a promo section in the middle that advertises that same product category and has a button that takes you to the page. This same rule applies if it was a professional service you’re offering. Try to have at least 2-3 different ways a visitor can access your services or products on your home page.
9) Interactive Elements
Having highly interactive elements that users can engage with is a great way to make your professional website stand out. Yes it’s important to have a beautiful color scheme and the right wording on your site. However, having elements on your site that you can click and see an effect occur is great for making your website appear more professional and attractive. It’s also more engaging for your users. Some common interactive features on professional websites are:
- Call to action buttons
- Accordion list
- Videos
- Floating elements
10) Quality Images
Having quality images on your website is one of the easiest ways to make it stand out and look professional. A clean, up to date and nicely placed image can really make certain sections of your website stand out. It may seem like a small detail but it’s really important. Making sure your images are clear and not blurry. Also that they’re not stretched or too small. Details like these makes the difference between a website versus a professional website. It’s also very important to keep in mind that when building your website on a template. Make sure the image you’re going to add matches the dimensions of the demo image. This way your image size look correct and fits the particular section of the website.
11) Internal Linking
Internal linking is another way to make your professional website stand out. It’s also helps regarding your site ranking on the search engines. Internal linking is when a hyperlink connects one page on your website to another page that’s within your website. For instance, on your home page there may be small paragraph that gives a bio of your business. Within that paragraph you may have a word or phrase that links to your “About Us” page. This way visitors can now go to that page within the paragraph. Internal linking examples such as this should be all throughout your website, especially on the home page. This helps you website with it’s ranking because the search engine are small spiders that crawl your website. As they crawl your site when they come across a new link on your webpage they now click on that link. If it’s a link within your website this allows the search engines to stay on your website and continue to crawl it. The longer a spider crawls your site the better for your business and potential ranking.
12) Call to Action Buttons
A common yet highly important feature to make your professional website stand out is with call to action buttons. Call to action buttons are clickable elements on a website that prompts a user to take a specific action. This could be to sign up for your newsletter, to purchase a product and more. All professional websites have them regardless of what industry your business is in. You’ve clicked call to action buttons plenty of times while being on a website whether you’re aware of it or not. You want to make sure you also have these available on your website for visitors to use. You should have at least 2-3 call to action buttons on the home page of your website. Make sure they’re color, shape, hover color and more all complement each other and match the tone of your web design.
These 12 tips are must-haves that will certainly make your professional website stand out and gain traffic. However, the building doesn’t stop here. The world of IT is always evolving, which means there’s always an update you can add to your website to stay on the top of your game. As the old saying goes in the world of web design, “a website is never fully complete.” This is because there’s always something you can add or update to make it pop. However, with these tips you have the web design staples and you’re on to a great start.
