Simple Website Design Tips For Everyone Marketing Online
When you hire a web design agency to design your new website, they will use lots of new terminologies you might not be familiar with. ‘Above the fold’ content is something you might hear talked about a lot as your site is built, but what does ‘above the fold’ and other website design terms mean? In this post, you’ll learn some simple tips to improve your website design and how to generate more leads for your business online.
Utilize the space above the fold in your website design to generate leads online
Your web design agency may have discussed the importance of above the fold content. No matter whether you’re starting your own business or you’re wondering how to succeed as an affiliate, you need to get your website right. ‘Above the fold’ is a term from the newspaper publishing industry which carried over to the web.
Newspapers are generally displayed in shops folded in half, so only the top half of the front page is visible. Publishers utilize this space to grab consumer’s attention with important stories, headlines, and strong visual images. This is all to encourage people to buy the paper.
Your digital agency should explain that the ‘fold’ on a web page is an area of a page the user sees before they have to scroll down. Essentially this is where your headline or important, eye-catching stories and content should be displayed. Based on a standard resolution display, this usually comprises the first few images, stories, carousels or blocks of text on the site. What content you place ‘above the fold’ is hugely important for your user’s experience of your website.
Even though we live in a more ‘scroll-oriented’ world, content placed above the fold generates around 80% of user engagement. Your approach to above the fold content should be laser-focused. Today’s user no longer has the attention span they used to. This space shouldn’t be filled with clutter or overwhelming amounts of information as it is a turnoff to today’s web browser.
If you want to generate more leads for your business, you should place a lead magnet or offer above the fold as well.
Below the fold website design tips
The importance of the content you place in the above the fold area in your website home page is unquestionable but below the fold matters too. While it is advisable to work with a web site design agency, you should know these marketing foundations too.
Understanding how and why a website designer works, and what they do, helps you to better appreciate your own website building process.
Designing for beyond the fold. While people will spend around 80% of their time above the fold, you still need to create great and engaging content and design for that other 20% of user interaction.
Studies have shown that having a visible scroll bar, it will be used by 76% of users. Consumers do scroll, but this needs to be encouraged by content and visual prompts. Discuss the best way to do this with a digital agency like ours.
Put a focus on website design for mobile users
For mobile device users, scrolling is as natural a user behavior as any other. To ensure you encourage this consumer behavior, you need to make the fold-line draw users into scrolling on.
Therefore, web design agency designers need to ensure that page templates and structures (page layouts) are designed to showcase all your important content.
Three great ways to do encourage scrolling are; staggering content columns, page trails and simply telling readers to do so. Staggering columns means making each column content different lengths. This ensures one paragraph or image is always broken by the fold, drawing users into scrolling.
Page trails mean creating a ‘footpath’ in which users ‘walk’ through a page, encouraging them to scroll on by bisecting the fold. Finally, you have the most direct method, simply using visual cues to guide people into scrolling or outright telling them to do so.
Look For Options That Provide Good Support
Web design agency’s customer service is an important aspect to look for when choosing a company to work with. While many may believe that web design begins and ends with receiving a commission to build a website and finishing the website, that should never be the case.
That’s because good web design companies will keep working with you. Web design/development is never a process that just finishes – it’s an ongoing process that involves support and re-building when necessary.
This is especially true if you’re taking on a web design company that is providing you with eCommerce systems. Such systems can be vitally important to a business’ everyday success. Without such a system in place, businesses could end up in serious trouble within 24 hours.
So when you commission a web designer to build a website with eCommerce capabilities, you need to make sure that the designer is going to offer you proper web support. Good support doesn’t just consist of dealing with problems when they arise. It’s also about keeping in touch with clients to ensure that the website is helping drive desired results.
This can involve a simple phone call from the designer to the client to let them know of new tools and techniques that may be of use to their current website. Businesses from home and online businesses have so much to deal with, so it can be easy to fall behind when it comes to the best web design practice. Good support isn’t just responsive in the face of emergencies. It’s an ongoing line of communication.
Use Chrome Extensions to enhance your website design
As you are creating, developing and using your website manually testing its responsiveness can take a lot of time. The good news is that a lot of this time could be saved by adding a few simple extensions to your Chrome web browser.
Become a superstar website manager by asking your web design agencies to add these tools to your website and add them to your own browser. Ask your digital agency about integrating the following tools and extensions for you.
WhatFont is a really useful tool. It helps you quickly identify what font a website is using (when the text is HTML formatted). It can help you confirm your brand font, find the right font size and color. Page Ruler is another great time-saving-tool.
Click the icon in your extension bar and hover over webpage elements. You can find their pixel measurement. Web Developer is a Chrome extension that works similarly to the ‘inspect element’ element feature.
It differs by offering quick access to fill in forms, view and edit CSS files, clear your cache and mark links among other features. BrowserStack is an extension used for testing and debugging compatibility with browsers.
As the name suggests, it allows you to test on different browsers. It is a great tool for a web design agency to use in building and developing your website. As a website is being designed and built you want to be kept up to date with any progress and be part of the process.
Notable helps with this. It allows your designer to mark-up revisions. They can capture their visible screen or the entire screen then import the image to a Notable account sharing it with you and others in your team.
Use a sales funnel system if you aren’t ready for a full website
Now I’d recommend if you want to make money with digital marketing, you should have your own website. It can help with branding, and it can be utilized as your online marketing hub in the future.
At the same time, if you are just getting started, or don’t want to deal with hiring a digital agency, or have a smaller budget, a sales funnel system is a great place to start. With a sales funnel system, you’ll have the ability to make landing pages, sell products, and generate leads with pre-built templates.
This can be a great cost-effective option that looks professional while marketing your business online. To learn more about using sales funnels to grow your business, check out this post on creating sales funnels for a business.
Overall when you follow the above website design tips you’ll be on track to generate more leads and sales for your business online. If you enjoyed this post I’d also recommend checking out this post on the top internet marketing books every business owner should read.
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Mike MacDonald
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Email: [email protected]
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