In a modern digital market where competition is fierce and attention spans are shrinking, a well-crafted website can set you apart.
Websites serve as virtual storefronts, information hubs and primary communication channels for businesses today. They have the power to set lasting impressions and captivate users. As such, a compelling website design must entice visitors to stay and delve deeper into your brand story and offerings.
While excellent design can improve website engagement, bad website design can make you appear untrustworthy. Cluttered layouts, confusing navigation and low-quality content can drive visitors away rather than invite them in.
By understanding the elements of a poorly designed website, you can avoid falling into the same pitfalls and create a website that converts.
This guide tackles what poor web design can do to your business and how to increase website engagement through a thoughtful website redesign, by looking at:
• What Are the Benefits of Good Web Design?
• Elements of Bad Website Design: What’s Making Your Site Look Untrustworthy?
• Website Design Tips: How To Increase Website Engagement
Whether planning a website redesign or building a new one entirely from scratch, these web design best practices can help turn visitors into loyal customers.
What Are the Benefits of Good Web Design?
Let’s look at how high-quality web design benefits your brand:
It Builds Trust
Design accounts for 75% of a website’s credibility (WebFX). Even if your products or services are top-notch, having a poorly designed website can make you appear untrustworthy to users.
Poor web design can make you lose credibility and trust with your audience, resulting in lost sales.
It Creates a Consistent Brand Identity
When your website’s design consistently aligns with your brand’s visual elements, color palette and typography, it creates a seamless and memorable user experience. Maintaining a cohesive look reinforces brand recognition, improves website user engagement and drives conversions.
It Impacts Your Search Rankings
When Google bots crawl and rank your websites, they consider several website design elements, including structure, loading speed, hierarchy, sitemap and navigation. If your website is cluttered and outdated, search engines may struggle to understand and prioritize your pages effectively, resulting in lower search rankings.
It Helps Reduce Bounce Rate
Implementing web design best practices can provide a positive user experience. Easy and intuitive navigation makes it easy for visitors to find what they need, encouraging them to stay on your website longer and explore more pages.
Higher Conversion Rates
An effective web design can drive visitors to take desired actions, such as subscribing to a newsletter, filling out a contact form or completing a purchase. Strategically placed call-to-action buttons and clear conversion paths can lead to higher conversion rates.
Elements of Bad Website Design: What’s Making Your Site Look Untrustworthy?
Trust is part of Google’s E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness) guidelines. It’s a set of rules Google uses to evaluate the credibility and quality of web pages. By creating content that follows E-E-A-T principles, website owners can increase their chances of improving their search performance and attracting more organic traffic.
Fostering trust with users involves creating a secure and reliable experience. Google wants to ensure that your content is not only accurate and authoritative but also safe for users to engage with.
That said, here are some typical elements of untrustworthy websites:
Slow Loading Pages
Nearly 70% of consumers admit that page speed influences their purchase decisions from an online retailer (Unbounce). Additionally, When faced with slow-loading websites, visitors often become frustrated, leading them to abandon the site and switch to a competitor. Additionally, slow-loading websites cost their owners $2.6 billion in yearly losses (Design Resources).
That’s why prioritizing speed and efficiency is a must when designing your website. Users expect quick access to information and seamless navigation to digest content rapidly. With a fast-loading website, visitors are more likely to trust your brand and perceive you as credible and trustworthy.
Cluttered and Complicated Layouts
A poorly designed website features busy layouts and excessive text, buttons and images. They lack a clear hierarchy and structure, making it difficult for visitors to discover what they need.
A chaotic design may convey a sense of unprofessionalism and lack of attention to detail. Users might question the legitimacy of the information or services provided. As a result, they might explore other options with a more credible and organized online presence.
Spelling or Grammar Errors
Spelling errors and poorly constructed sentences are signs of poor web design. They can make your brand appear careless and unprofessional. It can foster a negative impression and make visitors lose confidence in your brand.
The way you communicate is a direct reflection of your brand’s identity and values. Well-written content on your website and across all channels makes you appear more trustworthy and authoritative among your target audience.
Mobile Unresponsiveness
There are almost 5 billion mobile internet users worldwide, making up over half of all internet traffic. Plus, 74% of users are more likely to return to mobile-friendly websites (WebFX). As such, having a website that adapts seamlessly to all devices and screen sizes becomes even more crucial.
Website Design Tips: How To Increase Website Engagement
Here are four actionable tips to boost your website performance and engagement:
Increase Page Speed
Besides fostering trust, page speed is one of the core signals Google uses for ranking.
Follow these website design tips to help you increase page speed:
• Minimize code, such as HTML, CSS and Javascript, to reduce computations on the backend. This means eliminating unwanted spaces, comments and characters to reduce the size of the files. Choose a reliable, performance-focused hosting provider.
• Enable compression to decrease page elements’ size and reduce the time it takes to load visuals.
• Reduce redirects to expedite loading times.
• Remove unnecessary widgets, plugins and extras.
• Evaluate user experience through user testing tools. Assessing your site’s performance can help you create more meaningful interactions.
Keep Your Design Clean and Simple
When it comes to website design, less is always more. Every element must contribute to a great user experience.
Here are some website design tips to consider:
• Stick to a limited color palette. This will make your website feel more polished and cohesive.
• Focus on the essentials. Avoid clutter and distractions and fit only necessary information on the landing page. This allows your content and key website design elements to stand out.
• Keep your checkout pages and drop-down menus intuitive and easy to find.
• Simplify internal linking structures and make sure they guide visitors from one page to another with a clear purpose. Doing so will inspire users to keep clicking and exploring your website.
• Leverage usability testing tools to identify areas that need improvement.
If you’re struggling with optimizing your pages, a website design agency like Thrive can help.
Optimize for Mobile Devices
Consider these tips on website design to optimize mobile responsiveness for your website:
• Make menus and call-to-action buttons less text-heavy
• Resize buttons to match the screen size
• Place information above the fold (or before the point where your visitor starts scrolling).
• Avoid large chunks of text. Keeping your web copy concise becomes all the more important on mobile.
• Generate feedback through user testing tools and determine which site features work best.
Add Strategic CTAs
If you’re planning a website redesign, consider placing strategic call-to-action (CTA) buttons at various points in the buyer’s journey. This can lead visitors through your sales funnel and motivate them to explore your website further.
Conduct A/B split testing on your CTA buttons, copy, color scheme and placement on the page to determine which version results in the most conversions.
Grow Your Brand With Thrive: Your Go-To Website Design Agency
Trust is the foundation of long-term customer relationships. And a high-quality website is the first step to cultivating trust and nurturing potential leads.
However, building an effective online platform and increasing website engagement is no easy feat. Partnering with an award-winning website design team like Thrive can help you save time and turn visitors into customers.
Since 2005, Thrive has been a reliable website design agency. We’ve successfully built ADA-compliant digital platforms for businesses of all shapes and sizes.
As an experienced website redesign company, we’re known for delivering real, measurable results.
One of our clients, Xtreme Lawn Care, wanted to replace their old HTML site with a mobile-friendly platform featuring conversion-focused design. They wanted a user-friendly site that enabled them to add new pages and update content easily.
By leveraging web design best practices and usability testing tools, our website redesign company developed a new platform that maximized conversions and website engagement.
Within 30 days of the launch, the client saw a notable surge in impressions and website user engagement.
With the help of our website redesign company, Xtreme Lawn Care saw a 67.77% increase in page views, a 106.89% increase in site visitors and a 101.54% growth in search traffic.
Maximize user satisfaction and drive sales by investing in a stunning, mobile-friendly website. For more tips on website design, schedule a consultation with Thrive. We’ll be happy to conduct an audit of your digital platform or build one from scratch.
