Website design
Do’s and Don’ts
- Don’t get complicated. When you are steering the ship you want to head to clear waters…stay away from the muck. When creating content for your website, include as much information as needed without causing confusion, muddle, and disorder. Have a plan beforehand.
At DWLI we make website design planning easy with a downloadable questionnaire designed to help guide this process. - Verify that your designer is working on a website that is compatible with both desktop and mobile viewing. Whether you bring in traffic from a social media source, search bar, or direct input, you want the transition to your website to be seamless on all devices.
- Content is key. Many times I’ve been to a website and have no clue what product, service, or message the person or company is trying to convey. Be crystal clear on what your website is about. Say so on the front page. For example, if you are mowing lawns, let them know – people may not realize your website page titled “Outdoor Engineering Company Working with Greens” is actually a lawn mowing service.
- Navigate your own website. Test it out on your friends, co-workers, and peers. Make sure everything works all the time. The designer will make sure everything is operational, but when they turn it over to you, it becomes your responsibility. You have to make sure the form that is filled out still works, your prices are current, the “contact us”email always works. Things happen, and when an update breaks something because of a compatibly or security issue, it has to be fixed. If you ignore the problem you’ll lose customers.
- Do not use annoying uncontrollable popup boxes. One pop-up box when a visitor is leaving or first arrives at your website is okay, but not several pop-ups every few minutes. To many of those will drive traffic away. A static clickable link works best.
- Do not be invasive. Do not ask for an email address and other information as soon as your website guest arrives. Give them time to figure out who you are, and what you’re offering.
All websites, new or redesigned require a certain amount of upkeep as well as optimization for good performance. Do not have a website built and then forget about it, It requires care and maintenance to keep it alive and working well. All our design plans include managed WordPress hosting: we do all the upkeep, so you don’t have too. For a free quote for website design contact sales@dwli.net
