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5 Ways To Make Your Website Look Professional

It takes 0.05 seconds to form an opinion about your website[1].
That’s 0.05 seconds for visitors to decide
whether they like your site and ultimately, whether they’ll stay or leave.

That’s 0.05 seconds you’ve got to make the
right first impression.

Professional looking websites are key to building trust. In fact, 75% of consumers make a judgement on a company’s credibility based on their website design[2].

If visitors can’t trust your website, they
won’t stay. That means you’re losing potential customers when you could be
boosting your sales.

Ready to build trust with your visitors with
more professional looking websites? Follow these 5 tips.

1.   Cut The Clutter From Your Website

There’s one thing professional websites have in common:
simplicity.

Got too many pop-ups? Ads? Widgets? Sidebars?
Got text and images spanning all over the page?

If you do – your users won’t know where to
look or start. You’ll make your website confusing and hard to understand. And
who wants to stick around for that?

Having an overly cluttered website will also
make your design appear outdated.

With this, we’re not saying you need to adhere to every single design trend as they go in and out of fashion. But, having an overly cluttered and outdated website will give the impression that your business hasn’t updated or looked at your website for years.

So, you’ll have visitors questioning how much
they can trust you.

After all, if you can’t update your website – are
you really the best place to buy from?

Or worse still, are you still in business?
Have you not updated because you don’t exist anymore?

Remove all doubts by clearing up the clutter.

Stick to the purpose of your website, and take
away anything that isn’t relevant.

2. 
Use A Responsive Design

Responsive designs have flexible layouts and
images which change their display and layout depending on what device they’re
viewed on.

This means that no matter where your users are
accessing you from, your content and information are always presented in the
best way.

Responsive design also helps mobile users to
get the best experience of your website. This is important because your
customers are more likely to find your website on mobile, as mobile-only traffic has taken over desktop
traffic worldwide[3].

3. Include Your Full Contact Details

Be contactable and accessible for your users.

It makes sense that contact information is
needed if you’re actively trying to get users to call or visit your site. But,
it serves another purpose that you might have overlooked.

It increases your accountability.

Contact details make your company look real.
They remove any anonymity and give people different ways to contact you if
anything should go wrong.

This reduces risk and increases trust, helping
to boost your sales.

4. Choose Your Font Wisely

Choosing the font for your website is a little
more intelligent than it might appear.

As general rules:

  • Don’t use more than 3 different fonts
    on a single page. It’s confusing and overwhelming
  • Make them big enough to read. Around
    12px is good for desktops.
  • Go even bigger for mobile. Make sure
    they’re at least 14px, as it’ll be harder to read on small screens

There are also two main types of fonts, Serif
and Sans Serif.

Serif fonts have the small projecting lines at
the end of letters, while Sans Serif fonts don’t.

Examples of Serif fonts are Times New Roman
and Georgia. While Sans Serif includes Arial and Helvetica. Generally, Sans
Serif fonts are easier to read online and can make a better choice for
websites.

Anything else, including script or cursive
style writing, might look good for decoration, but it’s difficult to read. So,
use sparingly and stick to a good Serif for your main font.

As long as it’s clear and easy to use, you
can’t go too far wrong. However, do try to avoid comic sans, as that will make designers mad.

5. Use Professional Photos

An image is worth a thousand words.

On your website, images are what initially
draws attention and hooks visitors in. So, they need to be good.

In an ideal world, you would get a
professional photographer take photos of your work or business. But, that’s not
always possible.

Which is where stock images come in.

There are tons of stock image sites online.
What you need to do it find one that naturally matches your business and
website, without looking like an obvious
stock image.

Avoid cheesy over the top photos. Avoid people
in suits, with an unnatural smile in business meetings.

Basically, avoid anything that looks like what
they tried to recreate here:

[https://www.adweek.com/creativity/vince-vaughn-and-costars-pose-idiotic-stock-photos-you-can-have-free-163239/]

These images give no reason for visitors to
trust you. After all, if you’re using noticeably fake images on your website,
how can they trust the services you’ll give them?

Need A Professional Website? Use The
Professionals

The problem with doing it all yourself is that
you’ve got no one there to turn to, and no one to stop you from making common
mistakes.

Need a hand implementing the above tips? Get
in some extra help.

Depending on what you need, a freelance
designer will be able to make your website look professional in no time at all.
What’s better, platforms like Fiverr[4] and
UpWork[5]
can get you quickly connected with people ready to take on your job.

For bigger jobs, it may be worth going
straight to a web design agency.

However, if you don’t want to pay the price
tag for design agencies, companies like Adzooma are great alternatives. Completely ‘done for you’, they provide
professionally designed and written websites that will help build trust and
boost your conversions.

Websites Don’t Just Need To Look
Professional

Websites are more than how they look. For a
truly professional site, it doesn’t need to have a professional design.

It needs to be targetted around its purpose.

Whatever the goal of your website is, whether
it’s encouraging visitors to checkout or give your company a call, there’s an
action you need your visitors to take.

So, your website should be filled with useful
information and design that encourages visitors to take this action.

Following these tips won’t just make your website look more professional. It’ll help you build trust and help increase your sales and conversions.


[1] https://www.sweor.com/firstimpressions

[2] https://www.sweor.com/firstimpressions

[3] https://www.comscore.com/Insights/Presentations-and-Whitepapers/2018/Global-Digital-Future-in-Focus-2018 

[4] https://www.fiverr.com/

[5] https://www.upwork.com/

Written by CrazyLeaf Editorial

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