Tips for awesome corporate website designing

There are five things that make up a good website, we call them the five epitomes of web design. They are appearance, content, user experience, features, and compliance. An awesome website design must be visually attractive, very easy to navigation, should be smooth and should be structured well with information worth the time and effort of the user.

I have seen numerous website design projects but the ones that stood out were the ones that had all the above five elements. Apart from those elements here are some tips for awesome corporate website designing.

1. Negative Spaces

Website should be sheek, sophisticated and at the same time should be user friendly. Negative spaces play a every important role in how the website feels and looks. Big organizations never clutter their web page. I have never seen a cluttered website of any big brands that are out there. Even facebook, squarespace and google have leverages the power of negative spaces to highlight whats important and whats not.

As a natural consequence of this approach is a minimalistic design which is pleasing to the eye. Having a cluttered homepage may stress the users. A lot of data is hard to consume in the first go by anyone. Having a simple plain website with functional creatives is the key to a compelling website. Here is an example of a good use case sceneario

As you can see a clear separation of content blocks which are really helpful for a user to navigate.

2. Clear Navigational Structure

Your services and sub services can get complex, lets say that you are a website providing ISO certifications. Now ISO certifications are really high in number. There are about 50 ISO certifications that you can provide, so how do you structure it. Well for every problem there is a solution, good designers can really make tabbed out menu which are not cluttered and use the given real estate really effectively. A flat navigation hierarchy is really good. Google says, the most important information should never be buried deep inside the website.  Also while designing your navigational structure, always keep in mind the 3 click rule which states that a user should be able to navigate to the desired information in not more than 3 clicks. This also lowers your bounce rates, the visitors stay invested in the website and the content and don’t loose attention. Website onpage factors are a really good guide for structuring your websites.

Here is an example of a great but complex navigational structure

If everything would just be a list item, it would be so much harder to understand. This is for an ecommerce website, you can apply the same to complex corporate navigational structure.

3. Engage your visitors

The voice of the website i.e. the copy should be concise and compelling. Don’t create a website that has lots of text which is nothing but only a graveyard where the user’s interest gets buried. Try to spice things up, get some cool icons, images and even videos to illustrate your points. Wherever possible add a read more button and let the user choose if he wants more information about something. Try to include gifs which catch a user’s attention. Through the years, I have begun to prefer website that present information left to right than from top to bottom. Try and incorporate this in your website. A lot of information can be shown through horizontal scrolls as well and then there is tabbed content. I really like to have the information presented that way. Don’t be too formal, no one likes that, be personal and connect with your audience at their level. Let them feel that personal touch with what you present them.

4. Include Testimonials

Great reviews builds up customers confidence in your brand. Try and get video testimonials that can really up your game, they are far more believable and easier to understand as well. Don’t be too overboard with this. Imagine 60 testimonials all with 5 star ratings. Common that’s out to be fake. Fake it but not like that. Include good words but also include 1-2 negative feedback as well. That really makes it more believable.

5. Blog / News Section

However big your brand is, you need a blog and news section. While the blog section can really help you in building a knowledge base which your customers can relate to, it also gives you an opportunity to boast about your capabilities and your latest projects. You never know what one might be searching for. Lets say for example, you add a case study, a customer might be facing the exact same problem and when he reads your case study and relates to it, imagine the conversion trigger. Apart from that always have a news and update section, people would like to see you grow. Especially if you are a company that has shares floated in the market. New updates can reflect on your share prices as well. Tell people whats going on in the organization. It can include an event that you might attend or your might organizations, any organizations or CSR initiatives.

6. Speed Matters

Don’t get lost in functionality and overlook speed. Speed is the single most important factor in any website. It can really drive your conversions up and down. Slow page load times can lead to a frustrating experience and can drive away a visitor or stakeholder. Page load speeds are also contributing factors towards loyalty. Here are some factors that can improve page load speed times.

7. Responsive Design

Employ a design that is accessible on all devices. You never know where your user could be viewing your website. With the explosion of devices, this has become a challenge. Modern technologies can account for erratic screen changes. Moreover, mobile optimization is a ranking factor for SEO. You might wanna strees on this since it is directly related to user experience.

Here is an example of responsive designs

More about Responsive Website Designs

8. Contact Details

If possible include contact details on every page on the website. A quick contact should always be visible somewhere which is noticeable. Try to keep the form short. For example, if you just need name and number, so be it, don’t ask for details because a user might only be interested in a phone call. Similarly, if phone number is more important then you can exclude the email field all together. Always include a google map on the web page which can directly lead to your place of work. This helps in local SEO and also bolsters your local ranking.