When you are launching a new business or refreshing the look of one you already have, it’s easy to fall into one of two camps when you start a website design. One is you get overwhelmed by the thought of what to do and how to do it so you procrastinate and it never gets done. The other extreme is you don’t put a lot of thought into it and rush to get something out there so you can cross the task off your to-do list.
Either way is not great. Your business needs a well thought out plan to start a website and a good design company like The Savvy Socialista to make it happen. We can take your idea and run with it or come up with a website idea ourselves that we know will knock your socks off!
So to get you in the website planning mode, here are some things to remember: 
- Ease of function is first and foremost. You don’t want people to get confused on where to go when they are on your home page. There are a few universal tabs people instantly recognize such as About, Services, Contact and Products/Shop so remember to design your navigation the way most people think. Yes, you can make it eye-catching but it must be easy to navigate.
- Keep branding consistent. Everything matters from the graphics you choose to the colors and fonts you select when you are starting a website. We are branding experts and can help you make everything work together to reinforce your brand.
- Offer fresh content. Google likes businesses that provide current information to others so consider starting a blog to position you as an expert and help you get higher search rankings. We can also help you with writing SEO-rich content to post on your blog or in an articles section.
- Be mobile. These days a good portion of people use their smart phones to read everything online so you need to make sure that you or your website designer set up the website to read easily on mobile phones.
For more information on what makes good website design and what not-so-good, check out this article . This article points out a fun and easy-to-navigate restaurant website as one of their good design examples. Below is their header but you can see their entire home page here.
We’ve designed and customized many websites and we strongly encourage our clients to really think about ease of use for the customer. The layout of Invite Cottage and Layna Lark are two of our favs!
When you have decided on starting a website or refresh an existing one, give us a call and we would love to work with you. If you missed our earlier blog about good website design with a few examples, you can click here to see it.