Your homepage is like the entrance to a super-duper, all bells and whistles luxury car showroom.
If you’ve ever been in the market for a luxury car, you might remember the sparkling clean entrance, the comfy customer seating, and the smell of brewing coffee. An Espresso, you say? Don’t mind if I do.
In the same way, you want to show your potential customers that you’ve got the goods. Whatever the products and services you offer, you need to incorporate dynamic website design.
Keep your website clean and polished, and you’ll enjoy traffic to your site all day long. Is your website in need of a revamp? Read more to learn how you can give visitors a great user experience with dynamic website design.
In the world of successful websites, you’ll quickly see that the simpler they are, the better.
Of course, you want to wow your visitors with cool graphics, funky fonts, and iconic images. But in web-design, you can have too much of a good thing, and that’ll put off visitors.
Too many images and colors (we’ll discuss these later) can feel confusing and claustrophobic. Instead, dynamic web design uses images strategically, to make a point.
Of course, if you’re selling items then you’ll want your images to stand out. For e-commerce sites, make sure your images are uniform in size and shape, and you leave a good amount of space between each one, so users can easily spot the item they’re looking for.
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and it’s like the behind-the-scenes makeup artist in the world of websites.
With dynamic website design, what users see is a website that’s easy to use and fun to read. Those are some of the things that make them sit back, get comfortable and stay engaged.
When you build in SEO, though, you suddenly become way more attractive to search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing.
The bottom line is, your page gets bumped up in their search results. When a customer searches for something you can give them, yours will be one of the first names they see.
If you’re redesigning your website, the best thing you can do to future-proof is to go mobile-first.
With almost all of us owning or having access to a mobile device, mobile internet traffic overtook desktop traffic in 2015. This shows us 2 main things.
First, dynamic website design involves creating an easy-to-use site that’s accessible to both desktop and mobile users.
Secondly, if you mess up and focus on just one group, you’ll be alienating a massive section of the market.
But why do we say mobile first, instead of sticking with a standard design and adapting it to mobiles later?
If you create your website for mobile-users first, it’ll give them a perfect user experience.
When your website displays and functions perfectly on a mobile device, you’ll already be miles ahead of your competition. People will prefer your site to those that are hard to read, slow to load and too large for their device screens.
Unlike digital photographs, it’s hard to scale a large, detailed desktop site down into something suitable for mobiles. There’s often not enough space, and elements are crowded or don’t display well.
Dynamic website design means creating your website for a mobile device, so you can ensure display perfection. Once you’ve got it down pat, scaling up is easy.
You can add elements to a desktop site to make it zing and pop, but your mobile site will hold the same information and look just as good. It’s a win-win for you as you’ll drive traffic from the entire webisphere to your site.
When we’re browsing the web, most of us will open up multiple tabs in our chosen browser. For users to remember which one of their tabs has you in it, you’ll need a favicon.
A favicon is a little image that represents your website. Though it’s only tiny (think 16×16 pixels small), your chosen favicon is like your site’s ambassador, so choose it carefully.
As part of dynamic website design, pick an icon that blends with your brand. You could use your business or website logo. Or go with a shape or image in your site colors. You want users to look at your favicon in their tab-happy browser and know it’s you.
There are few things more frustrating than a website that takes ages to load. In our busy, breakneck-pace lives, ‘ages’ can mean 10 seconds opposed to 3.
It might not sound like a lot but, actually, a slow-to-load website could drive away traffic. A user may see your page on a search engine and be genuinely interested. But if it takes a long time to see what you’re about, oftentimes they’ll shut you down.
There are several ways to speed up your website, like minimising HTTP requests, reducing the amount of time it takes your server to respond, or through image optimization.
If you’re a techie, you’ll be able to tweak these yourself. If not, hire a team of professionals to do it for you. They’ll have access to the best tools, latest technology and a lot of know-how, to get your site looking its best.
Did you know that the font you use can have a big impact on how successful your site is? Use a font that looks cool but is hard to read, and you’ll lose a lot of traffic. Users will head over to your site for all the reasons above, but once they get there, they can’t work out what you’re trying to say.
Or, maybe it’s not the readability of your font that’s the problem – maybe you’re using too many of them.
Like image overcrowding, a site that uses too many fonts will make a user confused. It will make it hard for your message to stand out, and will ultimately lose you business.
Think of that luxury car showroom again. Did you notice how they tend to group cars of the same size together? Imagine if, instead, they scattered cars around, putting big ones next to small ones, 4x4s beside sports cars. How easy would it be to spot what you’re looking for, now?
Instead of going crazy on the number of fonts you use, pick a good one and run with it.
Choose a font you love. Then, make sure it’s easy to read. Next, choose another 1 or 2 fonts that way, and stop.
You should only be using 2 or 3 fonts across your entire website. Rather than changing up the font itself, use different weights, styles, and sizes to make things stand out and catch people’s attention.
White space is pretty underrated, but it can mean the difference between minutes spent on your site, or just seconds.
To understand what white space is, think of that luxury car showroom again. Its shiny white floors provide the perfect focal point for those super-cool, iconic cars you came in to see. The more floor-space you see, the easier it is to spot the car you want and access it quickly.
The white space, or the space between images, icons, and text on your website acts as the floor-space in that showroom. The more white (or blank) space a user sees, the easier it’ll be for them to pick out just what they’re looking for.
If your luxury car showroom had a hundred cars packed in like multicolored sardines, it’d cause sensory overload. You’d be dazzled by the psychedelic colors and have no idea how to get to what you wanted.
For dynamic website design, when choosing your colors, pick one main color that compliments your theme and brand. Next, choose a contrasting color that’ll help your message pop. Finally, choose colors that compliment your base color. Adobe Color CC is a great free tool to pick colors that work.
You should only use up to 5 colors in your arsenal, but different shades are fine, too. That way your brand will be cohesive and clear, to help users understand what you’re all about.
In the end, however incredible your website looks, and however easy it is to use unless it has some substance none of that matters.
Dynamic website design includes quality content. Quality content is how you show people your site’s not just superficial but has brains as well as beauty.
Research topics your client base is interested in, and then write about them. You can find interesting topics related to your business genre all over the internet – take a peek at online forums and see what potential clients are saying.
Another way to create quality content is a customer-focused blog. Show off what you know in a helpful way.
You can use how-to guides, Q&A videos, or pick a topic that people are confused about, and give them the facts. Controversial topics work well.
Once your users see that you know your stuff, they’ll be coming back to see what else you can tell them, and you’ll build a loyal base of followers to boot.
Like a luxury car showroom, your website needs to have a high-end finish with lots of effective design elements built in.
Use dynamic website design tools rules like keeping it simple, going mobile-first, and making the best use of white space. These elements will keep your website looking its best and will make it easier for people to find what they need, fast.
But the thing that truly makes a user sit back and smile is good quality content. The information you give out on your website is what makes it sing – it’s your voice and personality, so make it a reflection of you. Make sure articles are clear, well-researched and well-written so your readers will be coming back for another look, time and time again.
Contact us today to see how The Web Ally can help your business succeed.
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