When you welcome a visitor to your website for the first time, it has a lot of similarities to meeting someone for the first time. Your typical first interactions involve a lot of awkward movements, cursory introductions, and surface level speech, like, where do you come from and what do you do, and if things evolve from there, you may start to talk about things that you enjoy, like, what’s your favorite book or where do you like to go to eat. The final phase of the process involves exchanging numbers and then meeting up at that favorite venue.
Just like that first human-to-human interaction, you want to ensure that you make a good first impression with your website. You want people to stay on your website for as long as possible. In order to do this, you don’t have to do anything fancy, neither do you need to spend heaps of cash, you just need to make your site effective. Many people tend to make the mistake of trying to make their site too perfect, and they end up making something that no one would really want to visit. Whether your website is just a single page or hundreds of pages, the steps below are things that you should follow if you want to make your site as effective as possible.
Make Site Name Visible
This means, the name of your site should be positioned, either in the centre or in the top left hand corner of the web page. Stephan King has his site name positioned in the top left corner, whereas Sarah Selecky prefers to have it in the centre. Your objective is to make it as easy as possible for your visitors to know where they are, and whose site they are on.
Create A Way for Visitors to Subscribe or Follow You
This is a common mistake that a lot of site owners make. You visit a website that you think is great, with really engaging content, and you look for a way to subscribe to his/her posts, so that you will be notified when next they submit a post. So you search through the entire website, but find no way to subscribe to the sites posts.
There is a general belief amongst some site owners that, if a person likes a website enough, then they’ll come back as often as possible.
But the reality is that there are so many websites out there, that we often forget to. Even if a visitor bookmarks your website, there’s still a strong chance they’ll never come back. Most people need that email reminder to come back to your site. Even if your site is quite shallow, you still want to create a way for people to join your mailing list, just so you can inform your visitors, in the event of something big.
Testimonials
You can increase your authority and credibility through the implementation of testimonials, social proof, and positive quotes from both reviewers and fans.
You want to position strong testimonials on your site, ensuring they are short and concise. Consider the inclusion of quotes from fans, positive reviews, notable media coverage, and if you have any significant social media following, then that’s something that you should include.
One of the best places for you to position your testimonials is on your about page, sidebar and <a href=”website url/”>Home page</a>; under email sign up forms, is another ideal positon.
Make It Responsive
The good thing is that most templates for websites today, come mobile-ready. The majority of people surf the internet on their mobile devices, which is why it’s so important that you appeal to this demographic. A visitor will spend a minimal amount of time on a website that is not optimised for their mobile device. Navigating through a website, that is not mobile ready, on a mobile device can be a very uncomfortable experience, which is why you’ll want to avoid creating that experience for your visitors. You’ll want to verify that your website is viewable on all the various devices, whether it’s your desktop machine, iPhone, iPad or Android device.
Use a 1 – 3 Colour Scheme
Unless you’re highly proficient at designing website, I’d recommend that you stuck with something fairly simple, like a three colour scheme for your site. If you try to implement too many designs into your website, it can look quite cumbersome and difficult to look at. So you want to keep things simple, and sleek, so it’s easy on the eyes and easy to navigate through.
