What if making a few changes to your website helped you leave your competition in the dust?

It may sound a little good to be true. However, following some web design best practices will help give you a better site than you ever dreamed of!

Keep reading to learn more about which features you absolutely must embrace!

The Secret to Web Design Best Practices

Many businesses think that there is a special “magic” to a great website. However, it’s actually much simpler than you think!

Ultimately, everything must be user-centered from the ground up. If you design every page by first asking “what do my customers need me to provide?” then you will end up with something they will love.

Here are five features to help you do just that!

1. Fast Speeds

For better or for worse, your customers are impatient. If your site takes too long to load, they find another site!

Use sites like Pingdom or Pagespeed insights to see both what your speed is and how it can improve. Be sure to check again after making any major additions to make sure that you didn’t accidentally slow things back down!

2. Merging SEO and Link Design

Your site should have a balance between SEO and best linking practices. This helps you draw customers in and keep them there.

For instance, good SEO design is necessary to help your customers even find your site. But if the page seems full of unintelligible keywords and irrelevant links, your customers will move on.

Again, be user-centric. Make sure every keyword and every link also enhances the user experience!

3. Analytics and Design

Proper use of analytics should be the cornerstone of your redesign process over time. This helps you to make your site even better, month after month.

Good analytics help you see things like your customer bounce rate, how long they lingered on certain pages, and what your unique page views look like. Using this tool every month helps you to improve your design and tailor something unique for your customers!

4. The Power of CMS

We’ve talked a lot about being user-centric. The truth is, you can’t do that without a good Content Management System.

A back-end CMS should be part of your website design. The idea is to make it very easy to continually add and update content to your site.

This CMS should allow you to offer a stream of engaging and useful content that your competition simply can’t match!

5. Responsive Design

The paradox of good website design is that you never know what browsers users may be using or whether they are using their PC or a smartphone. That’s why responsive design is crucial.

A responsive website design means that the site is optimized for clear navigation no matter how customers see it. And understanding that many will visit with a smartphone helps you optimize the design accordingly!

The Bottom Line

If you’re reading this, you want a great new web design and you want to earn more website traffic. However, you may not know where to start when it comes to web design best practices.

That’s where we come in! Surfaced Media is the final authority in stylish and user-centric design. To see how we can transform your site, contact us today!