Website design ebbs and flows like the tide so it can be difficult to keep up with the latest trends.
Whether you need a new website from scratch, or you want to revamp an old one, this is the guide for you. Keep reading to learn the top features that great website layouts implement.
1. Business Explanation
Website layouts without an explanation of what the business has to offer won’t do you any good, even if the layout is beautifully designed.
Visitors should be able to click on your website and immediately know what your business offers. Don’t make readers search long and hard to find out what you do. Most visitors will bounce if you can’t quickly offer them an answer.
2. Appealing Visual Design
Everyone has their own preferences for aesthetics. What you find appealing might not be what your target audience likes. When creating a homepage layout, it’s important to appeal to your audience.
For example, if you are attracting millennials, don’t go with a formal corporate website design.
Colours, images, words, and other design elements will come into play here. Designs are non-verbal forms of communication that you’ll want to implement into your visual design.
Whatever you land on, make sure the design is cohesive without overdoing any aspects.
3. Video and Images
A lot of businesses are adding videos to their landing pages to make it easier for their target audience to learn about their company. Creating YouTube videos and adding them to websites can help pique consumer interest.
If you don’t want to use a video for your landing page, you can include videos in these forms:
- Customer testimonials
- Demos
- Informational videos
Keep videos concise and short to keep the interest of your viewers.
In addition to video, images help break up chunky walls of text that may be unappealing to website visitors.
When choosing images, make sure they are lightweight to provide users with the best experience. Website viewers won’t wait around for a large image to upload.
4. User Friendly Navigation
Getting visitors to stay on your website homepage is step one of generating leads. Next, you’ll want them to dig deeper into your site’s content.
Visitors that want to check out products hope for user-friendly navigation, so give it to them! This might be one of the most important aspects of website layouts.
Your navigation bar should be easy to find. Don’t settle for a sleek-looking website if it means your navigation bar has to be hidden. This will only frustrate your visitors.
Colour contrast makes the navigation bar easy to spot. Keep the actual navigation as simple as possible by limiting options. If you do have a lot of pages, combine the navigation bar with dropdown menus.
5. Mobile Optimisation
If your website looks good on desktops, that’s great! However, if it only looks good on desktops, you could be losing out on a huge chunk of potential customers.
These days, consumers complete a lot of searches on their smartphones and devices. If your website is not optimised for mobile, it can be impossible for mobile phone users to navigate through it.
Your website needs to be responsive to multiple devices for optimal reach. Give both desktop and mobile users the same experience.
If you don’t know how to optimise your website for mobile, hiring an inbound marketing team that includes web designers is in your best interest.
6. Branding Elements
Every business should have a set of brand guidelines that they follow throughout each marketing channel. This way, your brand is easily identifiable from anywhere.
A website homepage might be the first step visitors take to get to know your business. If yours doesn’t help sell your brand, it’s time for a redesign.
Using brand elements on your website, especially your homepage, can build connections with customers. Branding materials should use the same fonts, colours, images, etc.
Branding elements build a sense of familiarity which later turns into trust.
7. Simple Design
We’ve covered a little about how the aesthetics of your website will depend on your target audience. Yet, a simple design seems to work for a lot of demographics.
Anything clunky or chunky is not going to cut it in website design. The ‘simple’ trend is spreading across the world and is likely here to stay.
Simple website layouts increase the effectiveness of the pages. Visitors that see too many things at once won’t know what they need to do next.
Design your homepage to ensure your visitors see the most important things first. These are some design ideas that can help you keep it simple:
- Lists highlighting important information
- Subheads to break up content
- White space
- Images with captions
- Short sentences
- A large, easy-to-read font
Simple homepages keep the call to action (CTA) as the main focus, which we will now talk more about.
8. Call To Action
Ideally, you want visitors to stay on your website as long as possible to complete a task or various tasks. A call to action will guide visitors toward buying your products or services.
You can do this effectively without being too ‘salesy.’ Here are some CTA ideas that hook visitors without pushing them to make a purchase:
- Free trial
- Free demo
- Learn more button
- Newsletter signup
Without a CTA on your homepage, you won’t lead visitors into the sales funnel. They will likely leave your site because they aren’t sure what to do next.
A CTA allows you to control the message and promote action. The ideal CTA location is above the area visitors see without scrolling, known as the fold.
Features of Trendy Website
Your website can still stand out from the competition even if you utilise some of the same features. The above eight design elements are essential to website layouts.
We know you’re eager to get started. Contact us today so that we can bring your website ideas to life.
