Just having a website is not enough when it comes to your business’ online success. Your website needs to be credible AND appealing. Keep in mind that an ugly website can hurt your business. Therefore, in this article, I would like to offer five simple things you can do to improve your website’s appeal.
1. Use appealing colors
Generally, women are said to prefer the colors blue, green and purple. Men seem to prefer the colors blue, black and green.
Therefore, blue and green are appealing color choices shared by both men and women.
Not surprisingly, blue is probably among the most popular colors used in websites, which may in part be due to the belief that it represents trust, loyalty, strength and peacefulness.
Green is the color which represents nature, eco-friendliness, harmony and safety.
White is the color that conveys cleanliness, honesty, perfection, newness and neutrality. The use of white (and white space) in web design is a popular and appealing trend to work well with popular colors such as blue and green.
2. Don’t clutter up your pages
Have you ever seen a website that is so cluttered with so much information (particularly too much text and not enough white space) that your eyes glaze over and you simply leave because you can’t easily find information that is relevant to you? Particularly for your home page, a much better approach is to put only the information that is most relevant to the majority of your target audience. When you put too much information (on any page of your website, but particularly your home page) in hopes of appealing to everyone, you end up turning off many if not most of your website visitors.
3. Use bulleted lists
A bulleted list is an effective way to present information that is relevant and easily accessible to your website visitor. A bulleted list could be one where you replace the bullets with checkmarks or some other type of icon. These other types of icons can make your content more visually appealing.
4. Use Eye Catching & Relevant Calls to Action
A call-to-action is a visual cue that usually requires an action (mouseover or click) that makes it easier for your website visitor to find the relevant information they want. Determining the most relevant topics for those calls to action and making them visually appealing or eye catching is an effective way to engage your website visitors. Here is a great example of some eye catching calls-to-action.
5. Use a mobile friendly design
The vast majority of people you want to reach are using mobile devices to access the online information they want and need. If your website is not mobile friendly, you will undoubtedly hurt your ability to effectively engage your visitors. A mobile friendly website makes it much easier for people to access your website when using a smart phone or tablet. This has become so important, that Google has incorporated a “ranking signal” in their mobile search algorithm which penalizes websites that are not mobile friendly.
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