Web Design Tips to Stand Out Without Breaking the Bank

Written by: Alaina Bergen, Marketing Specialist at Offering Tree

These days, having a standout website is non-negotiable. Yet, the misconception that achieving this requires a hefty monetary investment persists. In reality, with the right strategies and a bit of creativity, it’s entirely possible to craft an exceptional website without draining your resources.  

Whether you’re a small business owner, a freelancer, or part of a startup, these web design tips will guide you through optimizing your website’s aesthetics and functionality, ensuring it captures and retains the attention of your visitors. Let’s explore how you can make your website shine.

Table of Contents:

• How to Get Started with Web Design Improvements
• Basic Website Design Tips to Improve the User Experience
• Other Website Best Practices to Consider

How to Get Started with Web Design Improvements

Improving your website design can be a rewarding project that enhances user engagement and overall functionality. For best results, you’ll want to do some strategic planning before you dive in. Here is where we recommend you start:

Define Your Goals

Before diving into the design aspect, clarify what you want to achieve with the redesign. Are you looking to improve usability, update the aesthetic, increase conversions, or perhaps all of the above? Clear goals will guide your design decisions.

Understand Your Audience

Already have an established business? Great! Talk to your clients and the larger community to find out where they get information and how they search for it. If you have an email list, send surveys and/or polls to gather a larger data set. 

If you’re in the process of opening a new business and don’t yet have regular clients or an email list, that’s okay! Research the competitors you’ve identified for business and audit their websites. Do they have a blog? Is it driving traffic? What topics do they cover? What social media platforms are they most active on? 

Review your data and identify core goals, motivations, pain points, and barriers. 

You’ll likely come up with various answers for each bucket – that’s expected! Most businesses have multiple segments, or personas, of their audience, and this data reveals exactly that. 

The more you understand each persona, the better off you are. Why?

• You can speak more directly to client needs in website copy, email copy, etc. 
• You can create new offerings that resonate better.
• You can attract a larger audience because you know who you are speaking to and what they care about.

Wish your small business had better online visibility? Download our Local SEO Checklist for Small Businesses for step-by-step guidance to unlock the power of organic search.

Basic Website Design Tips to Improve the User Experience

The most basic requirements your site needs to fulfill are not related to beauty or intricate graphic design. Actually, the most successful websites prioritize the user experience (UX) and build from there.

The following tips and recommendations get at the heart of what matters most in web design. 

Best Practices for Readability

Enhancing readability is crucial in web design, as it directly impacts user engagement, satisfaction, and the overall effectiveness of your website. Here are some best practices for readability to consider when redesigning your website:

• Use clear and legible font type
• Ensure there is appropriate contrast between the text color and background
• Keep paragraphs short to avoid overwhelming text – No more than 3 sentences long
• Utilize white space to ensure your page isn’t cluttered
• Use bullet lists for important information that can be easily broken up

Conceptual Hierarchy & Page Structure

Ensuring your website has an appropriate and effective page structure is crucial for both user experience and search engine optimization (SEO). 

A well-structured website helps users find the information they need easily and encourages longer visits, while also making it easier for search engines to crawl and index your content. 

Here are some key points to consider when redesigning your website to improve its structure:

• Plan it out first on paper or digitally.
• Keep navigation simple.
• Use clear and descriptive URLs.
• Ensure logical content structure.
• Make sure structure and design are consistent across your site.
• Link to relevant internal pages wisely to avoid duplicate content.

Simple Visual Elements

Creating simple yet effective visual elements is key to a successful website redesign. These elements not only enhance the aesthetic appeal of your site but also improve user experience and engagement. Here are some strategies to create visuals that are both simple and impactful:

• Use color wisely: Consider emotion and psychology behind different colors, stay on brand, ensure there is appropriate contrast between colors.
• Embrace whitespace: Keep pages clean, uncluttered, and well-balanced.  
• Relevance is key: Ensure your images and graphics are relevant to the content, align with your brand, and add value for readers.
• Mobile-responsiveness: Images and graphics need to be responsive to screen size and device type (IE desktop vs mobile vs tablet). If half of the graphic is cut off on a mobile device and half of your site traffic are mobile users – you may want to reconsider that choice or get help to make the graphic more responsive. 

Organized and Intuitive Site Navigation

Creating intuitive and organized site navigation is crucial for ensuring a positive user experience. Well-designed navigation helps users find information quickly and easily, which can significantly increase their satisfaction and the likelihood of returning to your site. 

Here are some key strategies to ensure your site navigation is both intuitive and organized:

• Keep it simple: Simplicity is the cornerstone of effective navigation. Limit the number of menu items to prevent overwhelming users.
• Use descriptive labels: Avoid using jargon or branded terms that might not be immediately understood by new visitors.
• Use a hierarchical structure: Prioritize the most important content and categorize the rest. Dropdown menus can be a good way to implement this structure, but they should be used sparingly to avoid complexity.
• Include a search function: For websites with extensive amounts of content, including a search box as part of your navigation can let users find what they need quickly and easily . 
• Utilize the footer: The footer is an excellent place for items that didn’t fit in the main navigation, such as your privacy policy, contact information, and social media profiles.

Other Website Best Practices to Consider

Designing your website impacts how you appear in search results, how people are able to understand the information once they find your site, and whether or not they can trust you. 

Beyond the visual elements of your website, there are a few other aspects of design to consider. 

Basic SEO Tactics

Implementing basic SEO tactics during your website redesign is essential to ensure your site remains visible and ranks well in search engine results. 

Here are some fundamental SEO strategies to incorporate into your redesign:

• Site Speed Optimization: Page loading speed is a critical ranking factor. Optimize images, minify CSS and JavaScript, and leverage browser caching to improve your site’s loading times.
• Clean and Structured URLs: Use SEO-friendly URLs that are easy to read and include relevant keywords. Avoid long URLs and use hyphens to separate words.
• Keyword Research: Conduct keyword research to understand what your target audience is searching for. Incorporate these keywords naturally into your page titles, headings, meta descriptions, and content.
• Optimize Meta Information: Ensure each page has a unique and descriptive title tag and meta description. These elements can influence click-through rates from search engine results pages.
• Internal Linking: Use internal linking wisely to help search engines crawl your site more effectively. It also helps distribute page authority throughout your site and can improve user navigation.
• High Quality Content: Create valuable and relevant content that addresses your audience’s needs and questions. High-quality content is more likely to be linked to on other websites, which indicates usefulness and increases rankings.
• Regularly Update Information: Keep your content fresh and updated, especially for year-specific content, references to stats, studies, etc. Regularly revisiting and updating your existing content can signal to search engines that your site is relevant. 

Design for Accessibility

Everyone uses the internet. Designing for accessibility ensures everyone who visits your website can learn about you, the solutions you provide, and access them – including those with disabilities. 

This not only expands your site’s reach but also reflects positively on your brand’s consideration for others. 

Here are key strategies to ensure your website redesign meets accessibility standards:

• Use Semantic HTML: Use HTML elements (e.g., <nav> for navigation, <h1>-<h6> for headings). This helps screen readers and assistive technologies understand the structure and navigate the content more effectively.
• Ensure Text Contrast: Follow Web Content Accessibility Guidelines for sufficient contrast between text and background colors to make content readable for people with visual impairments and isn’t too overwhelming for neurodivergent individuals. 
• Provide Text Alternatives: For all non-text content (e.g., images, videos), provide alternative text (alt text) that describes the content or function so users who need screen readers can access your content.
• Enable Resizable Text: Ensure that text can be resized up to 200% without losing content or functionality. This helps users with low vision read and understand your content.

Showcase Trust Factors

Showcasing trust factors on your website is crucial for building credibility with your audience, encouraging engagement, and driving conversions. Trust factors signal to visitors that your site is reputable, secure, and worthy of their time and investment. 

Here are effective ways to incorporate trust factors into your website redesign, along with explanations of their importance:

• Showcase Customer Testimonials and Reviews: Authentic testimonials and reviews from satisfied customers can significantly enhance credibility. 
• Display Trust Seals and Certifications: Trust seals from recognized authorities (like the Better Business Bureau, Trustpilot, or Verisign) can enhance trust, especially on checkout pages. 
• Highlight Partnerships and Affiliations: Showcasing well-known, credible industry partners, memberships in professional organization, or participation in reputable affiliate programs can boost your trustworthiness.
• Implement a Clear Privacy Policy: A transparent privacy policy that explains how you collect, use, and protect user data is essential for building trust.
• Display Awards and Recognitions: These serve as endorsements of your brand’s excellence and reliability. They can differentiate your site from competitors and build trust with new visitors.

You don’t need to be a design pro or spend big bucks to hire one to have a great website. More often than not, less is more! Watch our webinar to learn Common DIY Website Mistakes to Avoid.

Try OfferingTree’s Simple Website Builder Free

Each tip we’ve shared is a stepping stone towards achieving a website that not only meets but exceeds expectations without breaking the bank. So, whether you’re enhancing readability, ensuring mobile responsiveness, or showcasing customer testimonials, the key is to be thoughtful and intentional with your design choices.

So, go ahead, embrace these strategies, and watch as your website becomes a testament to your brand’s uniqueness and professionalism— all the while adhering to a budget that works for you.

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