Make Your Website Perfect that Drives Results [The Ultimate Guide]

Reading Time: 10 minutes

Do you know?

• About two-thirds of people prefer to read something which is beautifully designed rather than something plain.
• If your website content/layout is not attractive, around 38% of the people will stop engaging with your website.
• A website’s design is the number one factor for 48% of the people in determining the credibility of a business.
• You have only 10 seconds to leave an impression on the user. After these 10 seconds (or maybe before), they’ll leave.
• It has been found in a web design research, crowded webs design makes a user confused and (s)he is likely to hit ‘back‘ button and it is a common mistake among small businesses.

Combining all these facts, it can be concluded, if your website is lacking something, then people are less likely to do business with you.

The objective of this blog post is to cover everything your website needs. I’ll get you covered; I’ll try to mention every single point that makes your site imperfect. So, you can consider those points to make your website perfect.

The blog post is on the basis of several pieces of research, the number of blog posts out there on the web, and my personal experience of over 15 years.

Factors like Website Design, UI/UX, SEO, etc. are the considerable factors that can build or break your business.

Let’s start with the very first factor:

1. Website Design

Let’s say you have to buy a new house; you visited some houses in which a few were new and fully furnished and rest were a dump and looks like they are decades behind the time.

Which house you’ll prefer to buy?

Obviously new and furnished, right? Majority of people will do the same. The reason is, the new and furnished house will make them feel comfortable and will establish some trust.

For your business, your website is your digital storefront. The design of your website matters a lot. If your design is lacking, people are not going to do business with you.

Researches said, simpler designs are better.

You might have a question, which researches? Don’t worry, I’ll cover it in this article.

Why your website must have a simpler and cleaner design?

Here are the reasons:

A simple design is timeless

Needless to say, website designs may outdated quickly. It’s like when you’re done with updating your website, it’s time for another update. But things do not need to be done this way. The reason is, the taste of users change frequently. Later in this blog post, I’ll also address, how and why is it so?

Crowded designs become outdated quickly and they lose their allure.

I’ve observed, simple designs last long, there are some designs that are doing well till date.

For example, you could check out Britain’s Keep Calm and Carry On poster from 1939.

I’ll recommend you to choose a simple color scheme and bold but basic typography so that your website visitors don’t feel like your website is outdated.

One more advantage of using simple design is, your website will need a fewer revision which will result in fewer expenses, you can maintain an appealing look for years.

A simple designs’ content is easy to read

It’ll not a lie if I’m saying that Internet users do not read every word on your site. 

According to an article on the buffer, 55% of the Internet users will read your blog post for 15 seconds or less.

[If you’re still here on this blog post, thanks for sticking to this one! :-)]

Simple website design with well-structured content can help you to overcome this issue. In order to maximize the number of visitors who will stay longer on your website, you can strip down your website design in such a way that important parts could easily be found.

You can remove the unnecessary parts to draw the user’s attention towards the important parts of your content that matter most.

The most common mistakes that I’ve seen on the web is, most of the websites are having bulky content which makes it hard for the reader to find out what exactly (s)he is looking for.

Worth to have a look on One Day Without Google (above) or Los Angeles Times (below), they have a quite clean site. They use white spaces and well-structured content on their website such that a reader can easily focus on a specific heading.

A simple design is easily accessible

As the number of Internet users growing so the number of persons with disabilities using the Internet. Persons with disabilities use to consume your content in various ways (probably you have heard of screen readers before).

It is required for a website to include features so that more and more people can access the site easily. There is no doubt, simple designs could make your site easily accessible. Also, simple website designs lead to positive user experience.

For example, you can check out Virgin America’s website which has been approved as being highly accessible. This site is simple and clean with just a navigation bar and a basic call-to-action.

You can also make your website design more accessible to grow your visitors and reduce your bounce rate.

A simple design loads faster

Load time of a website is one of the most important ranking factors to rank on Google or in SEO and user experience.

In general, the more time your website takes to load the more will be the bounce rate. Data published by Tyton Media proved so.

Do you know, what makes a website slow? It’s complex images, options, and features.

Removing unnecessary features and images and using optimized images can help your website load faster which in turn will give a great user experience and higher ranking in SERPs.

For example, you can look at the homepage of Zen Habits, the site has minimal text with no images. In one of their recent posts, they have not even included a menu bar.

It’ll not be surprising to look at their page speed, according to GTmetrix. The site is loading incredibly fast. And Zen Habits is one of the most successful blogs out there.

A simple design is easy to use

Mentioning this point here doesn’t mean, it’s less important. In fact, this is the most important. If your website is easy to use, then great! Otherwise, it is of no use.

The easiest way to improve the usability of your site is to make it simpler. You can simplify your website by limiting the options available and make it clean and simple. Crowded websites with a massive number of options make users confused.

The first step is to optimize the navigation menu, just remove the options from the navigation menu that are less used by the visitors.

For example, it’s worth to have a look at the navigation bar from Rogue Society Gin (Now Space Grace), they have a simple header bar which makes it easy to use for the visitors.

After you’re done fixing the navigation menu, time to improve the homepage.

Rarely any popular site is having a homepage with a ton of content, they just showcase their bestselling product. You might have seen most sites do have ‘Start Free Trial’ button on their homepage, this is also a strategy for lead generation.

Similar to this, you also have to include minimal content on the homepage and encourage visitors for one path of action. It’ll help you to make most out of your site.

There are a number of other reasons to have a simple and clean website design, but to keep this post short, I’m mentioning only 5 reasons that I believe is enough to give you a basic understanding.

Now the second most important factor that makes your website, a perfect site.

User Experience/User Interface [UI/UX]

UI stands for User Interface that includes all the visual elements like screen, webpages, buttons, etc. These visual elements are used by a user to interact with a device. It’s the UI of a website which is responsible for:

• How easily a user can walk through a website?
• How easily a user would be able to get what (s)he wants?

and much more.

A UI designer is required to focus on the user experience. To have a great user experience, it’s required to focus on UI. If your website is easy to navigate and a user can easily access what (s)he is looking for, that’s great.

UX stands for User Experience that includes the overall experience a user has had while using your website. As mentioned, user experience depends on the user interface, but in actual it includes much more than just UI. UX is more about getting someone from point A to point B in a seemingly effortless process on the side of the user. Here are some concepts involved within the user experience:

• The process, a user walkthrough to discover the product of the company.
• Series of actions taken by the users on the website while interacting.
• The thoughts that arise as they try to accomplish a task.
• The whole impression they are left with after interacting with the website.

Great user experience leads to a satisfactory interaction between a customer and your products/services.

Today ordinary people are using computers just because they’re having an easy to use UI. If you’ll consider the time when the computer was first introduced, only people who know coding could give computer commands.

Developers then worked on the computer to make it user-friendly and easy to use with simple layouts. Then the idea of GUI (Graphical User Interface) began, windows were created, dropdowns were added and computers are made easy to navigate with different icons.

The same thing you should consider about your website. The objective must be to make your website simple and easy to use. The great UI your website will have, the great will be the UX and hence more conversions.

Why does UI/UX matter?

If you know a little about SEO, then you might also know, a website could only be successful if it responses quickly and efficiently. Everyone is in a hurry in this fast-paced world. Even Google itself rank those sites which are having good user experience and respond quickly. Your website must be heavily based around user experience, you have to consider all the possible bugs that a user may experience at your website and then fix them.

If your website is comparatively hard to navigate and taking 15 seconds more than your competitor’s site, you’re not going to do well. Your UI be like, a user can easily find what (s)he is looking for.

Let’s move to the third factor that affects in making your website perfect.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Before I mention how and why SEO is important, I think you should know:

Does SEO even matter? Is SEO important for every business?

Most of the people who own a business or a brand know (or think they know) that, SEO is a need for their business. There is no false in this. SEO definitely helps you to improve your website’s visibility and searchability.

Here, I’ll mention why SEO is important. Also, I’ll give you some reasons which will give you some clarity about, why you need SEO, to take your business to the next level.

Without SEO, you won’t be able to rank faster in SERPs and hence no organic traffic which implies no conversions and no engagement.

Modern SEO, if done properly, can help you to rank comparatively faster than usual. Your website will then attract new potential customers organically.

It leads me to mention the first reason, why your site needs SEO?

1. SEO drives organic traffic to a website

No matter, how hard you’re trying and which platform(s) you’re using to drive traffic to your website. Be it Quora, Reddit, Forum, Social media like Facebook/Instagram/YouTube/Pinterest, etc. If you’re not ranking in SERPs, you’re not going to do well.

The reason is, only organic traffic is consistent and have a long life. Traffic from other sources (other than Search Engine) is temporary, as long as you’ll work, you’ll get traffic and if you stopped working, traffic will go down.

Instead of putting all your energy on social media and other platforms to bring visitors to your site, I’d like to suggest you spend time on SEO. You can make the most out of it, if once you rank on #1 page on Google.

Do you know, over 75% of the searches start with Google? This is why it’s important to rank on Google. Quality SEO ensures you to take your business on the top.

2. SEO builds trust & credibility

Sites with higher domain authority are trusted by Google and it’s easier to rank for those sites which are having great domain authority.

Building trust and to have a great domain authority can’t be done in a single day. It takes time and consistency. There are a number of elements in SEO to build domain authority like:

• Quality Backlinks
• Positive User Experience
• Machine-Learning Signals
• Optimized Content and On-Page Elements

Remember establishing a brand to create trust and credibility demands for time, efforts, and energy with patience.

3. Good SEO means better UX

Who does not want to have better rankings and more organic traffic? But only a few have made it! Just because they know user experience is one of the most important of Google’s ranking factors.

After a number of updates, Google now knows how to interpret a favorable or unfavorable user experience. And a positive user experience plays an important role to make your website a success.

You can look at Google itself, Google is investing a lot in making their search engine better. They try hard to serve what a user is looking for, on the SERPs.

When Google itself is working hard for better user experience, why should you not? You must focus on SEO which will lead to better UX if you possess quality.

4. SEO, when done for local, helps in lead generation & conversions

In a recent June 2019 core update by Google, there are some changes in Google local. Local searches are increasing day by day. People are looking for products and services near them. It is required for you to do local SEO as well to keep your business in the race.

Local SEO will not just help you to be in the race but also in ranking for local search and hence more engagement and most conversions. Your website will appear on the first page when a local search will be performed.

Local optimizations could be done for specific cities, towns, regions, and states, to establish a viable medium for a brands’ messaging on a local level.

Chase positive ratings on Google Local and other sites like Yelp, Home Advisor, and Angie’s List (among others), depending on your industry.

5. SEO impacts the buying cycle

Many times, instead of directly visiting a site, people perform a Google search while looking for something. So, if with modern SEO, you have ranked on the 1st page of Google, then people who perform Google search will visit your site.

If done in the right way, it’ll impact of buying cycle undoubtedly.

There are a lot more reasons that your website needs SEO.

• SEO helps you to be friendly with the web environment.
• SEO is comparatively cheaper than paid ads.
• You can have a long go with SEO.
• You can rank #1 on Google.
• It brings new opportunities in light.