When designing a new business website, there are certain things you have to keep in mind. Style, layout and accessibility all have their roles to play in helping it look slick, so let’s take a look at them now. Time to get web designing!

1. Focus your colour scheme

Remember, we’re making a website here, not a Jackson Pollock painting. A simple, attractive colour scheme is always the best choice, so don’t try to do anything too fancy. Stick to no more than three complementary colours, and choose them very carefully. The best website colour schemes always reflect their content (i.e. white and blue if you repair fridges or red, black and orange if you sell barbeques), so take time to consider what works best for your business.

2. Pick a clean, modern font

It may seem like a fairly trivial matter, but you should never underestimate the impact of your website’s font. It creates an instant impression, not to mention affecting the entire site. So, we better make it a good one! You’re probably aware of the horrors of Comic Sans by now, but its lesser-known yet equally dated cousin Papyrus is also a big no-no. You’ll want to go with something slick, classy and unobtrusive – a font like Gotham or Helvetica should do you nicely.

3. Use high-res images

Nothing says “I don’t know what I’m doing” faster than tiny, pixelated images. After all, the idea is to show off your products and services in the best possible light, and the easiest way to do that is through crisp, high-quality pictures. Always pick the very best photographs to display on your website, unless you want it to look like a late-90s high school kid’s Buffy fan page.

4. Make it easy to navigate

As with the colour scheme, ‘focused’ and ‘simple’ are the keywords when it comes to your website’s layout. The whole site should be free of clutter, with clearly labelled links to every section (‘Products’, ‘About Us’, ‘Contact’, etc.) and all information readily accessible. Nobody’s going to stick around very long if they can’t find what they’re looking for, so keep it clean, organised and professional.

5. Consider your mobile users

More and more people are migrating from desktops and laptops to smartphone and tablets nowadays, which means that your website should ideally be optimised for mobile devices. Accordion menus, for example, are very useful, as they serve to counter the lack of vertical space generally found on mobile screens. Just keep all your dropdowns and sliders clear and easy to access, and you should be just fine.

We hope this helps while you’re busy planning out your new website, and we wish you the best of luck in getting it sorted!

Image credit: Giphy