A website may be one of the biggest selling tools you have and it can bring in a lot of sale, but it can lose you a lot if the site is not designed and programmed in the correct way. It may be that you have had a website built, worked really hard to get it up the search engines and found for your top [phrases only to find that a high percentage of your visitors leave as soon as they land on the site. This can be for a number of reasons but one common one is that the site is too busy.

Gone are the days of having lots of animated gifs and bold colours, fresh, clean and easy to navigate is the new “in” style. People haven’t got time to be trawling through page upon page to find the information that they need or to see if you actually do sell the product they are looking for. They want to search and be taken right to the page that has the answers.

If you have a high bounce rate on your site then why not take a step back and view it from the eyes of a customer. You could even ask some friends or family to have a look and give you some honest feedback. Simply stripping back on the animation and making the site have a white full width background can really make a huge difference.

Sometimes, when web designers are creating a website they may lose sight of the main reason for the site, which is for a user to either access services and products or gain information. The website may be all singing, all dancing but if it is not user friendly then visitors to the site will quickly leave.

So, what are the most important points for web designers to consider when designing a user friendly website?

Fast load times are really important for a website so that the website visitors do not have to wait for the page to load. Fast load times are not only critical for user experience, but they can also have a big impact on SEO.

One of the most important features of a user-friendly website is navigation that is effective and clear. It is vital that the navigation allows visitors to get where they want to be quickly and efficiently. User-friendly websites must have a clear call-to-action so that visitors can clearly identify the next steps. For example, a button that links to a contact form or a phone number to make a call.

As most people now access websites on a mobile device it is important for users that the site is mobile compatible so that all aspects of the page should be automatically compatible with a wide range of screen sizes.

When you are having a new website designed it can sometimes feel difficult to know how to communicate your ideas to your website developer. Often meeting with your developer may be done through an online video calling service so it sometimes is harder to show them what ideas you like.

One idea is to take some time prior to the meeting to create a mood board.

So, what is a mood board?  Well basically it’s a collage of things that you like, this may include colour schemes, font styles and pictures to create a suitable tone for your website.

To create this, you could look around at other websites for ideas but also look on any form of printed media such as magazines or leaflets. You could also research the use of colour and what psychological effects different colours have on potential customers.

Once you have a collection of ideas simply put them onto one document (be it a physical one or a digital one) and give your mood board to your website designer. 

This is a great way of communicating what sort of thing you’d like to see on your own website and will allow the developer to throw in some additional ideas.

The job of a graphic designer can be quite varied depending on what they need to do. It may be that they not only do designs for logos, stationery, and signage but also websites, social media and corporate brochures. A designer needs to have a creative flare but also be able to stitch to a brief. You want your designer to have some ideas and to give you inspiration, but you also need them to be able to take direction from you when needed and to put aside what they want in favour of what the customer wants.

If you work with a graphic designer, it is vital that you give them a full brief to work from. If you are too vague then you may end up with something that is very far off the mark, and this can mean that they have to waste time changing their designs completely. If you give them too much of a fixed brief then you may find that they do not get the opportunity to add their creative side to it and that it lacks inspiration. It is vital that you get the balance right and often this takes a little bit of time when you first start working with someone new.

Every educational setting is required to have a website and quite rightly as it is an important link between the educational setting and home for parents with children at the setting but also for teachers, governors and other stakeholders. However, the ongoing maintenance of the website such as keeping it up to date and uploading fresh content can be time consuming for already busy staff so the responsibility for updating the website usually falls to the setting administrator who may not have a great deal of expertise in this area and will therefore require specific training to enable them to fulfil this role.

Choosing a web design and web maintenance company to set up the website and give continued support to the staff is probably a wise option as the time it would take an inexperienced member of staff who is already very busy would be huge. The company will be able to design the website after consultation with the educational setting management so that it meets the needs of the users.

Many web design companies offer a support package to schools so that they can be contacted if there are any issues that staff cannot resolve and will conduct regular maintenance work on the website to make sure it is functioning as it should.

Although not every page have to follow the same structure on your site it does help to keep to some sort of consistency in the design. For example. The Nav bar should ideally stay in the same place as you go through the site along with the footer. You may have a big header image at the top of the home page which you decide to remove for the other pages to ensure you get the most important content towards the top. If you have an ecommerce site then you may have category pages and then product pages. The category pages should all follow the same structure, and the product pages should also follow the same structure even if they are different to each other. This will allow customers to learn where to find the information they want and allow them to easily compare.

It can sometimes be a good idea to ask visitors for their feedback on the site – whether they found it easy to navigate round, what additional functionality would be helpful to them. This can help you focus your attention where needed and may help increase conversions on the site as people are more like to compete a purchase or make an enquiry if they like suing the website and find it easy to navigate.