In today’s technological world, almost every business and brand is represented online to be visible to their audiences. So, users are both spoiled with a variety of choices, and very demanding. What users expect is that a website is both incredibly looking and high-performing. It means that, in order to attract potential customers, a business should have a very attractive site that works so quickly that the user is never nervous about having to wait. So, what does it really take to create an incredible-looking, high-performing website?
Creating a Website
Of course, what people think of when they hear the phrase ‘create a website’ is usually a team of software developers, web designers, and marketing specialists working hard to create it from scratch. Yet, the reality is more simple. Anybody can create a website without outsourcing this task because there are website builders, drag-and-drop constructors, and other user-friendly tools to build an incredible and, what’s more important, a working website. So, if you feel like you are ready to start with your website creation, choose your tool but be sure to learn reviews before any purchases on this site. If you are a first-time customer of such functionality, the user-friendly manuals will help you start quickly and learn by doing, immediately.
It’s also important to remember that your website is your business card, and the first impression really matters. Even if you have a tight budget, you still can create something worth the user’s attention. And we are not talking about the complex design by professionals. The website builder is enough to make your website look good and useable – ready-made designs or unique ones are there at your disposal.
Making a Site Visually Attractive
Great design is what draws first-time website visitor’s attention immediately and motivates them to stay longer and check the information presented. Besides, for some businesses related to arts, fashion, and creativity, the outstanding design is what demonstrates and is associated with the business owner’s style, originality, and professionalism. For example, it is especially important that the website is stylish and visually attractive if it is the branded site of a photographer, designer, makeup artist, architect, stylist, hairdresser, etc. In highly competitive niches, such as travel blogging and travel services, the visual appeal also helps to remain outstanding.
To make the website visually attractive, the following tips exist:
- Choose only appealing photos and videos;
- Harmonize the background color, fonts, and visual content together. Remember to keep the same style;
- Format your content to perfection, paying attention to every indent and paragraph spacing;
- Ensure the content is useful and fits the visuals;
- Follow the ‘eye care’ concept and let your users feel cozy and relaxed at your website rather than stressed to find what matters the most;
- Make the website personal because people like to connect.
At the same time, the website design and visual attractivity should not be made at the expense of its functionality and performance. Be sure to combine all at once and check how others are doing that effectively and learn from them. Marketing agencies’ and web designers’ websites are wonderful samples of visual attractivity and efficient customer retention techniques.
Ensuring High Performance
Research suggests that modern users do not want to wait longer than 3-8 seconds watching anything load. People get easily distracted or nervous and may switch to another website easily. So, when it takes nine seconds for your website to load, the beautiful and engaging content no longer matters. You have just lost the visitor (and maybe a future client) and even had no chance to present your business. This means a high-performing website is a key for potential customer engagement and retention.
When talking about site performance, its load speed is everything. Today’s versed users got used to getting the information they want immediately. To stay competitive, it’s absolutely crucial to be sure your best content reaches your potential clients faster than anyone else’s. That is a very simple rule not everyone follows.
So, to ensure the high performance of a website, the following steps are recommended:
- Select the correct framework suiting your needs – no extra code complexity is needed if you are just building a blog or a photo gallery;
- Ensure your visual and video content is optimized properly to avoid extra-size files downloads;
- Optimize the webpages by simplifying HTML, CSS, and web controls;
- Avoid installing too many plugins, which are not necessary for the website administration;
- Optimize your content management platform like WordPress by referring to tips and tricks shared by professionals;
- Improve database design and avoid long-working data queries;
- Ensure sufficient storage space (hosting settings) and high network speed for the website to access extra data;
- Avoid using slow third-party services;
- Ensure that the website can stand high-traffic time periods well;
- Optimize widgets and functional elements such as order forms, calculators, and other interactive components;
- Or just turn to an expert for speed optimization advice and/or external audit.
Though, the high performance of a website is not a purely technical thing. This is also about the visitor’s comfort, visual pleasure of quickly loading design elements and content, and a sort of respect to everyone involved in the business. All in all, a smoothly working order form positively impacts the company’s reputation, too.
Conclusion
One should not be a professional software developer to create a visually attractive and high-performing website today. Even the best custom software development companies are pointing out the same things we mentioned but they also agree that one man can create a good looking website on his own. There are intuitive tools, which help one do the task quickly and easily, and there are best practices and common recommendations which allow a business owner to avoid mistakes done by others previously. Yet, even with the use of professional website builders which allow integrating best coding and performance optimization practices smoothly into a constructor, the website creator should remember about principles of choosing content for the ready site. Ultimately, visual appeal and load speed are the factors directly affecting website visitor interest, purchase behavior, and retention. They are the keys to high conversion rates and happy visitors reporting outstanding customer satisfaction.
