Business 101: Web Design – Is Your Web Site an Embarrassingly Ugly Business Card?

Is your web site the online equivalent of those embarrassingly ugly business cards? You know the ones I am talking about – the cheesy cards made with those Do-It-Yourself business card kits that come complete with stock perforated paper that you run through your ink jet printer!

Admit it – when someone hands you one of those business cards, you judge them. You assume that either they aren’t doing very well in business (because they aren’t good at what they do) or that they are so shiny new in business that it’s too soon to tell if they are any good.

Either way, trusting them with your business is a big risk to you as the customer. So instead of taking the risk, you smile and nod and put the DIY business card in the pocket you save for people you don’t want to follow-up with.

Your Web Site is Your Online Business Card

Your web site is no different from an embarrassingly ugly business card. It’s the physical representation of your business. It signals visitors as to the business behind it. It tells people you don’t take your business seriously enough to invest in marketing it properly. It’s like showing up to a networking event wearing jeans and a t-shirt.

Take an interior designer as an example. It’s not practical for potential clients to visit the homes of the clients she designed for so in essence, her web site is her online portfolio. Imagine if you visited an interior design site with blurry graphics, misaligned fonts, and poor quality photos.

The money you save on an amateurish web design will cost your business in the end when potential clients exit your site without contacting you for a design estimate. It doesn’t matter how talented you are as a designer, your web site told a different (and less flattering) story.

Key Web Site Design Essentials

#1: Brand Personality – Is your brand creative and quirky or serious and smart? Before you do anything with your web site, you must determine your brand personality. The easiest way to do that is to imagine your brand as a person. How would your brand dress? Behave? Interact?

#2: Design Simplicity – When it comes to the visual design, follow the golden rule: less is more! Avoid filling the page with visual clutter, using too many colors, or switching fonts. Flashing and jumping objects can be overwhelming too so use with care. Remember, everything you add should serve a purpose.

#3: Copywriting Style – Just as your graphics need to mirror your brand personality, your copy should be written in the voice of your brand. For example, a young, hip brand may use a lot of slang; whereas, a buttoned-up professional company would choose more formal language.

#4: Navigation Ease – Imagine if your annoying DIY business card was written in invisible ink or a cryptic code. It would be very annoying for the people who were trying to use it to connect with you. The same holds true for your web site. Make your navigation simple and obvious (like 86-year-old technophobe Grandma obvious).

#5: White Space – Think of the white space on your web site as a visual break for your site visitors and leave plenty of it. Use white space between titles, paragraphs and bullet points to make your web copy more readable and around graphic elements to make them stand out.

#6: Social Media Friendliness – And a post on web design wouldn’t be a post on web design without mentioning social media friendliness. Make sure all your content is shareable through social media, and it’s easy to connect with your brand in social media.