Website Design For 2019 and Beyond By Meg Cooper
What does your website look like? Take a minute to pull it up and look at it and then, write down your answers to these questions: 1) Are you on a computer? A tablet? A mobile phone? 2) How fast did your website load? Was it a second? Two? More than five? 3) What is the first thing you notice? Your logo? The colors? A headline? An image? 4) Where is your site menu? Is it easily accessible? 5) Where is your call-to-action (CTA)? Do you have one? 6) Do you have social media channels and are they represented clearly? Ideally, your answers to these questions should be: 1) Any device—it shouldn’t matter what I’m on, my website looks great! 2) Loaded quickly (in less than two seconds) 3) Logo/business name 4) Yes, at the top of the page 5) Yes, front and center 6) Yes and, finally, yes All these answers boil down to one point—the future of website design weighs heavily on the user experience (UX, for short). You want to have your customers’ experience at the forefront of your website design, and you can do this by thinking of one word: ease. Ease-of-use for your customers: ease of use on a mobile device, ease of accessibility and ease of conversion. Making your website user-friendly is more than just an easy layout or using stunning graphics. The UX should be a complete package from the front-end of your website, which is what the customer sees, to the back-end of your website, which is the data that you’re collecting to provide users with a comprehensive and personalized UX. Yes, this means you may have to take a few extra steps to provide a UX that converts customers, but your website is your online storefront and it is just as important to make sure your online store is working as best as it possibly can. Still not convinced? Imagine this scenario. You’re at a trade show sitting in your booth. Your booth has your logo (front and center on your banner), a few sample products, some informational packets and your best salespeople are right next to you. Now, break this down and think of it like your website. You wouldn’t want your logo to be small and hard to find in a crowd, would you? You’d want some sample products available to grab the attention of potential customers, so they can learn more about your business through your salespeople. It’s key to engage those who stop by into a deeper conversation
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