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10 Ways to Make Your Website Look Professional
Having a professional website doesn’t mean using a specific set of colors or fonts to appear professional, it’s about understanding your audience and providing a user-friendly and strategic approach to design. These ten tips below will help you think strategically about how to improve or create your website and are in no specific order.
Design with Visual hierarchy
Today we have 5 seconds or less to capture the attention of our audience, which means most of the time they are quickly scanning pages, picking out keywords and making decisions based more in connection or emotion with what they see.
The visual hierarchy in website design refers to the arrangement and presentation of website UI elements in order of their importance so that users can easily scan page information needed quickly, click and purchase a website product smoothly. - mockplus.com
Basically, you want to present the most relevant information at the jump:
What does your business do? What are the services? Who is the team behind this? Where can I view more work?
It’s important not to rely on text alone either - add in photos to break up the content into bite sized pieces. I say, if it’s over 5 sentences long, on your home page - do some editing. You can also use images to convey your point instead of blocks of text.
2. Custom Logo + FaVICON
A custom logo is incredibly helpful in increasing credibility with your audience. You can add it to all marketing materials, and create a “brand style” that is consistent across all platforms.
Now, if you don’t have a logo - do NOT stress. Even the most simple logo can give a more elegant and professional look to your business, and make you more memorable. Your logo should always be: easy to read, show on every page, link people back to your home page.
I do not believe that a professionally designed logo is imperative for every single business, because if your hitting the next 9 bullet points, chances are you’re building a lot of credibility with your audience already
Now, let’s talk about favicons:
Not sure what a favicon is? It’s the little icon that shows up on your browser tab, next to the title of the page. This can often be something that’s looked over, but can easily make anyone look like a novice.
Here’s an example of a Squarespace website where the favicon hasn’t been set:
And here’s example of custom favicons:
Regardless of what platform you’re designing your website, they likely will give you a favicon that represents THEIR brand and not yours.
If you’re not sure what to do, try something simple, like the first letter of your business on top of a block of color - like the image above.
3.Photo quality
One of the biggest rules of thumb when it comes to creating a professional website design is taking into consideration the quality of your photos.
Poor photo quality can create mistrust with your audience, as they draw a line between the quality of your site/photos to the quality of your products or services.
If your photos are not high-resolution, don’t fret, just work with the size of the low-res photo that maintains the quality. That may mean you need to restructure your design to compliment those photos.
Low-resolution photography can create a low-end, less than professional feel. It’s better to remove those photos all together and see if you can utilize stock photos from websites like pexels or unsplash.
4.Mobile optimization
“Mobile accounts for approximately half of web traffic worldwide. In the third quarter of 2019, mobile devices (excluding tablets) generated 51.51 percent of global website traffic, consistently hovering around the 50 percent mark since the beginning of 2017. “ - Statista 2019:
If you’re not currently optimized for mobile, how does it make you feel to know you’re missing 51% of potential opportunities?
With over 50% of consumers using the internet on their phones to view content, you absolutely must make sure that your website is optimized for mobile.
What does that even mean?!
Basically, it means that if someone loads your website on their phone they can easily navigate the site, there are no readability issues like images covering text, or text becoming impossible to read over images, etc.
Test your website on mobile and make adjustments if you need to. You can often use CSS tricks to format the mobile view to make it more readable.
5. Font Selection + Readability
Like in bulletpoint number one, break your copy up into bite-sized pieces of content for your audience!
Readability is the name of the game! You want your content to be so easy to read, so concise that you know you’re getting the PURPOSE and SOLUTION of your business across without losing their attention. Font selection is a big part of readability, from the size of text to the number of different fonts you use for headings, body copy and more.
There is such a thing as TOO MANY FONTS.
If you have too many different fonts, it can create visual noise, making the content hard to read or focus on, so we lose attention. When choosing fonts, a good rule of thumb is to use no more than three and that these three should be complimentary.
So, how do you know what fonts are complimentary?
Your font selections should relate to your audience and professional branding. If you’re not sure what fonts to pair together, test out a few at fontpair.
Consider the “feeling” that your font portrays and if that matches your ideal customer profile.
For example, let’s say you’re a dentist and you have a local practice. You’re probably not going to be using a font like this:
It’s doesn’t to exude “professional dentists office” but, you know what that font might be good for? A skateboarding company or a clothing company.
See how font selection can impact the credibility and perception of your brand?
So, go look at fonts across websites you love and take a look at their font styling from headings, to sub-headings, to body copy to get a sense of what works and what doesn’t. Then, figure out the personality of your brand and who you’re speaking to, to find the level of playfulness in the font you select.
Finally, if you’re still not sure - head to fontpair to look for inspiration or direction!
6. Concise Copywriting
Have you ever heard of an elevator pitch?
An elevator pitch is a brief, persuasive speech that you use to spark interest in what your organization does. You can also use them to create interest in a project, idea, or product – or in yourself. A good elevator pitch should last no longer than a short elevator ride of 20 to 30 seconds, hence the name.
I love to discuss this with my clients because it helps them to encapsulate what is unique about their business in a concise snippet. That snippet, that golden little snippet, can then be used throughout the site.
This is a great jumping off point when writing about your services. Don’t get too lengthy or use redundant phrases on every page because you’re going to lose our attention spans.
Make sure that you’re delivering relevant content to your viewers and ask yourself, what would my ideal customer come to my website for and what questions would they be asking?
All too often I see tons of copy that doesn’t actually resonate and just seems to say the same thing over and over. The best exercise to prevent this from happening to your website is to start by writing out blurbs that are no longer than 5 sentences and edit, edit, edit!
7. Testimonials
Whether you have a service-based business or a product line, testimonials will help bring more credibility to the quality of your work and your expertise. I love to see testimonials throughout a website to give me an idea of how you’ll be to work with or if your product is truly what I’m looking for.
My biggest suggestion here is to integrate asking for a review into your off-boarding or post-purchase process. Make sure to provide the links to your customer to post their review on the sites that give you the most traffic or exposure - like facebook or google. Then, you can copy and paste these directly into your website.
This is such a fantastic way to showcase what makes you unique through the eyes of your paying customers - so highlight that!
Some people like to have an entire page dedicated to their client testimonials, while others just feature them in specific sections - like before the BUY or BOOK NOW buttons.
8. No ads, including “Created by Wix”
Now, I’m not saying to NOT run google ads to make more moolah, but if you want to focus your audience’s eye on what YOU do rather than giving them an option to click away from your site, consider removing ads entirely, or placing them strategically though out the site.
When building your website on any of the popular platforms, they often put a note in the footer with their link. Typically these are really easy to remove, as they are just text links, but you want to make sure they are GONZO.
Do you ever see a “Made With Wix” button or link at the bottom of corporate websites? Nope! Because professional businesses are unique, not templated, and you are more than a “Wix Site”.
9. Press
If you’ve been written up on other blogs, magazine articles, have been a guest on a podcast or even have a few video guest spots - emphasize that! You’re building clout and proving the quality of your products or services as written about from other substantial outlets. Let them do the talking for you!
When it comes to press sections on a website there are a couple of ways that look really elegant and don’t take a lot of work:
Create a “as seen in” banner that displays all the logos of the brands who have promoted your business
Create a press page that has links to each publication or article
I’ve come across several press pages that don’t link anywhere (whether a PDF, image or actual website displaying the work) and it always makes me feel like the page doesn’t have a purpose.
The number one thing I tell all of my website clients is that every page on your website should be build with purpose and intention. If you’ve only got 5 seconds to capture someone’s attention, you must be intentional with your design and where you want people to spend those 5 seconds.
10. Use familiar terms
“Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.”
Pablo Picasso
As an artist, illustrator and website designer, I can get a little carried away when it comes to being creative - but as Pablo says - you have to know the rules before you can break them.
When you’re creating page titles for your website like Bio, Work, etc. it’s important to use terms that people are familiar with so they understand where to go for the answers to their questions. This same practice should be applied to any buttons or copy.
I’ve seen numerous sites try to get overly creative with their navigation titles, or download links that end up creating a LOT of confusion, and confusion means clicking away!
Alrighty, folks
THAT’S IT! THAT’S ALL YOU NEED!
….. Just kidding!
If you’ve been following me for awhile than hopefully you know by now that there are several components (more than what can be put on a list) that go into creating a professional and unique website that gets you real results.
