How To Create The Perfect Website After Starting Your Business

How To Create The Perfect Website After Starting Your Business: Design Tips For Entrepreneurs

Your business is up and running. The hard part’s over, right?

Not quite. You still need to create the perfect website, which is easier said than done. That’s because the mythical “perfect website” doesn’t exist. 

Every business is different. What works for one might not work for yours, so it’s hard to give a specific breakdown of how to design and structure your website. 

There are some best practices you can follow to give your website the best chance of success — and that’s what we’re going to cover in this article.

So keep reading to get yourself up to speed on the practices and principles you can follow to design a website that’s perfect for your business. 

But first, let’s take a look at why website design is essential. 

Why Is Website Design Important For Your Business? 

Your company's website is a visual representation of it. If it doesn’t make an excellent first impression, you risk losing consumers for good. 

Let’s look at this in more detail and explore why your website design is so important. 

Create a Smooth User Experience 

When visitors land on your website, they expect a good experience. If they don’t get one, they won’t hang around. 

With visitors quickly leaving your site regularly, you can see a high bounce rate. This tells Google that your site isn’t great, which can affect your search rankings. 

That’s why website design is essential. 

With a well-designed website, you can make sure visitors receive a smooth and seamless experience. This will encourage them to stay on your site longer, showing Google that it’s worth visiting. 

Increase Conversions 

If your website design is up to scratch, you’ve a higher chance of increasing your conversions.

How?

Let’s take a look: 

• Call to action: Choosing where to place your call to action is essential. If it’s not visible, it can affect your conversions. But if you design your site well, you can place your call to action strategically. As a result, you increase your chances of getting visitors to convert. 
• Load time: With the right website design, you can ensure that your site is quickly loaded. With website conversion rates dropping by 4.42% with each additional second of load time, the quicker your website loads, the better.

Improve Brand Perception 

When consumers land on your website, they automatically get a perception of your brand. 

Imagine you’re looking for a new TV. You search Google and click on the top two websites in the search rankings. 

The first website looks old. It’s slow, the images aren’t good quality, and the design isn’t appealing. 

What would your perception be of that brand? Not great, right?

But the second website is different. It has high-quality images, it’s easy to navigate, and it’s quick. What are your thoughts on this brand? Much better than the first website, we bet. 

That’s how having a good website design can improve your brand perception. If it’s well designed, people will have a better first impression of your brand. As a new company, it’s even more important to give consumers an excellent first impression.

Five Design Tips For Creating The Perfect Website

Now let’s take a look at five website design tips you can implement to create the perfect website for your business. 

1. Focus on your homepage 

More often than not, your homepage is the first thing visitors see when they land on your site. As we’ve already mentioned, first impressions count, so you need to do everything possible to ensure that your homepage is engaging and easy to navigate.

Here’s what we’d suggest: 

• Make what you do clear: As soon as a consumer opens your homepage, what you do must be immediately apparent. If it’s not, there’s nothing to stop them from going to a competitor that does make it clear. Take a look at Inc And Go’s website as an example. 

It’s immediately apparent that Inc And provide incorporation services and advice. So if a visitor lands on this website and is looking for advice on how to register their business, they know they’ve come to the right place. 

• Use a clear call to action: As we’ve already mentioned, your call to action placement and design is pretty important. When it comes to your homepage, you want your call to action to be as straightforward as possible. 

Ideally, it should be above the fold, so the user doesn’t scroll to see it. Take a look at InFlow’s BOM Software page as an example. Its call to action is brightly coloured and easy to see as soon as the page loads. The text also uses imperative language, which is a great way to encourage visitors to take action. 

2. Think about search intent 

One of the critical things to think about when designing your website is search intent.

If you’re not familiar with search intent, it’s the reason behind the phrases visitors search for when they land on your website. 

For example, let’s say you search for free learning resources. You come across StuDocu’s website, an online study resource platform. In this scenario, its homepage matches your search intent. 

So what can you do to make sure your website is geared toward search intent? 

Fortunately, there are a lot of tools and platforms out there that can help. Websites such as Google Analytics, SEMRush, and MarketMuse can all show you what people search for when they land on certain pages. 

With this information, you can create a website that’s tailored to what consumers are looking for. It’ll also help you target consumers that are interested in what you have to offer. It’s a win-win. 

3. Create a clear pricing page 

If you’re running a SaaS business, your pricing page is one of the essential parts of your website. It tells visitors what they’ll pay for your service and what’s included in that price. 

If the page isn’t designed well, visitors might struggle to figure out what your pricing is. This could put them off altogether. 

So how should you design your pricing page? 

Truthfully, it depends on the type of pricing model you want to offer. 

Here are some options: 

• Flat rate: This pricing model offers a single price for access to all your features. For instance, if you subscribe to The New Yorker, you pay a flat rate per month or year to access the magazine. 
• Usage-based: You charge customers based on how much they use your product or service. The more they use, the higher the price. 
• Per-user: How many users a customer has will determine how much you charge. Take a look at monday.com, for example. Its site allows you to choose how many users (or seats) you want. This changes the subscription price. 

• Tiered: This pricing option provides customers with a selection of packages to choose from. Generally speaking, the more features included in each package, the more expensive it is. 

Once you’ve figured out how to structure your pricing, here are some tips for laying it out on your website: 

• Show them helpful information: You want customers to pick the pricing plan that’s right for them. To do this, they need to know what’s included. This page from Vistaprint is a great example. It outlines what’s included in each package so users can pick a plan that’s right for them. 

• Make your pricing as straightforward as possible: Research shows that users value simplicity when pricing. They want to know precisely what they’re getting. An overly complicated layout makes it hard to follow. So keep it simple and maybe have some FAQs further down the page to be helpful. 

If you’re still struggling to figure out how to structure your pricing page, take a look at some SaaS pricing page examples for inspiration. 

4. Make sure your site is designed for mobile 

There are two main reasons you should design your site for mobile use: 

• SEO: Google predominantly uses the mobile version of your website for ranking. It even said so itself. So if your website isn’t mobile-friendly, your search rankings could suffer. 
• Mobile users: There are 6.378 billion mobile users in the world. This number will continue to grow. You could be losing a lot of visitors if your website isn't mobile-friendly. 

So how can you make sure your site is mobile-friendly? 

Here are a few tips: 

• Make your website responsive: A responsive website works for both mobile and desktop. It includes all the same content but responds to the device being used. In other words, the website will change its appearance based on whatever device the visitor is using. 
• Keep your content simple: When a visitor lands on your website on their mobile device, everything on your desktop site is condensed to a small screen. If you’ve got too much going on, it’ll make it hard for the user to navigate. So keep it simple, don’t use large blocks of text, and keep your design as light as possible. It’ll be easier for everyone to move around your site, no matter what device they’re using. 
• Think about call-to-action placement: As we’ve already mentioned, a responsive website will automatically rearrange your layout based on the visitor’s device. This means your call to action on a desktop might not be where you’d like on a mobile screen. To make sure the placement is correct, take a look at your mobile site design before it goes live. You can see where the call to action is and make changes if you need to. 

5. Work with reliable website designers 

If you’re worried about designing your website, don’t be. There are plenty of designers out there that can help you create the perfect website. 

The trick is knowing how to find the good ones. 

To find the right website designer for your business, you’ll need to spend some time researching the companies you’re thinking about. 

Here’s what we’d suggest you check: 

• Their online reviews: Look at their reviews and see what other people have said about their services. If you search for the company name on Google, you should be able to see past reviews. Or better yet, if you know someone who’s used them, talk to them about their experience. 
• Their portfolio: Browse through their portfolio to see what they’ve done in the past. This will show you if their work is up to your standards. Take a look at Inkbot’s portfolio as an example. 
• Their website: Spend some time looking through their website. If the design is poor or it's slow to load, that’s a red flag. 

As a new business owner, we know that you might not have the time to sit down and review a variety of web designers. 

If you’re struggling to find the time, consider using PEO companies to take some of the weight off your shoulders. They can manage the work contracts and logistics of hiring designers (both in-house and remote), which will free up your time to focus on more critical tasks, like running your business. 

Get your website on the right tracks with Inkbot Design 

Now that you’ve got a solid understanding of how to create the perfect website for your new business, it’s time to get the ball rolling.

If you’re looking for additional support and guidance, look at our web design services.  As a team of creative professionals, we help businesses create engaging websites that are responsive and easy to manage.

Author Bio: Reid Burns has his roots in the supply chain, handling global teams for private label companies. He has since transitioned to freelance work, providing thought leadership in the e-Commerce domain.