Primary Elements of a Good Web Design

There are a billion things that you can do in order to have an effective web site, but there are some primary elements that should be included in any web site.

Good Domain Name

You should have a domain name that is memorable. And it should be easy to spell, and as short as possible. Or you can use your company’s name, which will help with branding your company. Stay away from dashes and underscores because they are difficult to explain over the phone, and people misunderstand what you might mean by dashes and underscores. Also stay away from having numerals in the name for the same reason.

Focus on Your Brand

You need to choose between whether you are going to focus your branding on your company or your product. If you are a service oriented company, then most likely you’ll focus on your company. If you sell products, then you might focus on your product instead.

One of our clients used to focus on their company name on their old web site, but the domain name was their featured product. Also, their company name was very generic. We ended up focusing on their main product in the design of the site and the company is seeing great response on the new site.

Professional Looking Design

How do you want to be perceived? Sometimes it’s okay to have an amateurish looking site if you think your customers won’t care. But if they will be investing a lot of money with you, then you want to spend the time and money to have a site that looks like a professional designed it.

Effective Calls to Action

Since you are the expert on your product or service, you need to tell the visitor what they are supposed to do. What do you want them to do? Call you? Fill out a contact form? Fill out a quote request? Download a brochure? Buy one of your products?

Have as many Calls to Action as you can so you can get a response from your visitors. This will help gauge the effectiveness of your site and allow you to test to see what works and what doesn’t.

Quality Content

With search engine optimization, one axiom is that content is king and linking is queen. You need to have a lot of good, fresh content. You can put up articles and blogs, and explanations of your products. It is best to put in your content the keywords that you’ve learned people are using to try to find a site like yours. If you are a local business, then you should have words in there that pertain to your city or state.

Memorable, Pertinent Photos and Graphics

Nothing drives me more nuts than a web site that has graphics on it that you find on every other web site on the web. The first one I hate is the shaking hands. It’s ubiquitous throughout the web. What drives me the most nuts is when they are shaking hands left handed.

Look to put pictures on your site that will communicate your story. If you are selling furniture or a hotel, put people in the people that are enjoying themselves. This will help your visitors put themselves into the picture.

There are a ton of other things you could do to tweak your site to make it more effective. We didn’t even get into search engine optimization and paid sponsorships. But if you follow these guidelines then you should be okay as you move forward with your site.

Dave Carlson is a Google Registered Adwords Professional and owns Green Chair Marketing Group, a Denver Internet marketing firm specializing in driving visitors to web sites by search engine optimization, pay per click advertising, and web site design/redesign. Call him at 720-922-3124.