5 Design Tips That Will Make Your Visitors Remember Your Website

Can you remember the last website you’ve visited? Unless it’s Facebook or another website you visit often, chances are you don’t remember much about it. 

There are 644 million active websites on the Internet, but most of these websites are so poorly designed that people don’t want to revisit them. Don’t be one of those websites! You want to create a memorable online experience for your visitors, and to have them keep coming back for more. 

Your website needs to be easy to navigate, as well as provide some value to your visitors. You can go the extra mile, and implement a few design tricks to make your visitors remember your website more than any other website with similar content. 

Here are 5 useful web design tips that can help you improve the overall customer experience on your website.

1. State your website's purpose in one or two sentences.

From Wholesalesuppliesplus.com

The average visitor spends 10-20 seconds on a website before leaving it. It’s your job to use that time to grab your visitors’ attention, and to make them stay on your site longer. What better way to do that than to tell them why they’re there? Use beautiful (but legible!) typography to clearly explain your website in a sentence or two, and place it near the top of the website. To increase the chances of it being read, you can bold, color, or italicize the text. Nothing makes a visitor leave faster than a website that forces them to scroll around to look for its purpose.

2. Create a catchy, memorable URL.

Okay, this one isn’t exactly a design element, but it’s such a good trick that we don’t want to exclude it from the list. People almost always remember a catchy URL. For example, if you’re selling snowboards, you could go with something like 'addictedtosnow.com.' Sure beats a dull URL like onlinestore.com/products/snowboards, doesn’t it? If you already have a URL, you could still create a catchy one, and redirect it to your original site. 

3. Add personality to your website.

From Zipcar.com

Your company or product's personality should be immediately and prominently communicated on your home page. Some of the best websites out there have some sort of personality or theme throughout the site. Even Google has one! If your website is purely informational, people won’t identify with it, and they’ll end up forgetting it. You want to engage your visitors, and let them know what kind of personality your brand has. You can incorporate some personality into your website with the colors, pictures, or even the overall design itself. 

4. Great photography.

From McDonalds.com

Using photos as a design element and central piece in web design is a great way to visually communicate your message to the viewers as well as adding more depth into the design. The two most popular ways of using photos in a web layout are using a large photo as your background, and using a "key" photo as the central focus on the page such as Apple.com. Remember, when using photos in your layout, they can really give your website an added visual element, as well as depth and space. On the other side of things, if the photo is of poor quality, clichè or unappealing, it can bring down the entire look of the web page.

Include captions for your images.

Did you know that people read image captions more than they read anything else? People often read image captions to judge whether or not the related content is worth reading. Make your captions witty and memorable!

5. Use bold, light colors.

From Babyclothes.com

A website with a light foreground on top of a light background often looks clean and simple. That makes the viewer feel at ease, and makes navigation easier. Typically, people prefer and stay longer on sites that use light colors and backgrounds as opposed to dark ones.

These are not inflexible rules, rather, they are insights based on our years of experience in designing websites. Ultimately, it’s your brand which will decide the best direction your website design should venture in.

Interested in learning more about how web design can improve your business?

Contact us, and see how we can improve it.