Secrets of a successful website

Being a web designer, i still find it amazing that some well established brands and companies still have poorly designed websites. Having a poorly designed website is like having a messy, dirty real life store - clients will judge based on appearance and most likely walk away, resulting in loss of business. No one likes a messy store. Suffice to say one of the keys to a successful website is it's appearance and design. It needs to look professional and in line with your company branding. Well designed websites instantly communicate that your company is well established and that you care about the highest of quality.

There's more to a successful website however than it just being pretty. You need good content that is easy to understand and gets a message across to the user. Your homepage should instantly convey who you are, what you do, what you sell and why customers should use your company.

Sometimes clients might want to stand out too much from the crowd and decide it would be beneficial to rename menu items to something more funky (e.g. changing "products" to "our handy-work") which can confuse users. For the most part your users want to get to the website and find what they want within a matter of seconds, if you make them think about what they're looking at you could lose them as a customer. Keep it simple.

Website's which are up to date and current show to have a larger conversion rate than those aren't updated regularly. Customers will enjoying coming back to your website and seeing the new content.

Keeping all these points in mind whilst getting your website design and developed will ensure you have a successful website and happy customers.