Take a look at these website branding guidelines to help you determine how to improve your website’s design & branding for a better user experience.
This is part 2 of a 4-part series on increasing sales through good website design and by improving its usability.
Today we’re going to look at part 2, and look at the identity of your website.
- A key question when someone first comes to your website is ‘Who are you?’
- It’s important to answer it quickly and make the paths to obvious follow-up questions very clear.
- So let’s look at some key factors that answer these questions.
Questions like:
- What do you do?
- Why should I trust you?
- What do you offer?
- How much does it cost?
Top 5 Branding Guidelines
Here are the top 5 branding guidelines that we feel you should have in place. These branding guidelines will convey clear brand signals throughout your website.
#1. Company Logo Is Prominently Placed
Web psychology shows that the most viewed part of a website is the top left corner (for websites in a ‘Right To Left’ written language it’s inverted), so it makes sense to use this part of the website to communicate your branding.
When we do a heatmap of most websites it looks like an ‘F’. Most eye movements are top left and on the menu, and then again on the first heading.
Put your logo or brand where it’s easy to find, and that usually means the upper-left of the screen. People expect it, and they like it when you make their lives easy.
#2. A Tagline Makes Company’s Purpose Clear
Answer ‘What do you do’ concisely with a descriptive tagline. Avoid marketing jargon and boil your unique value proposition down to a few words. This is also a plus for SEO.
In SEO terms it’s often called a ‘meta-description’ and it’s what users see when they view your website in the search results. It needs to be amazing and engaging so that people will actually visit your website! This is made up of 2 parts.
The title & the tagline and BOTH need to be brilliant. You might have the best and most expensive website in the world, but if your title & description looks like this…
You’re not going to get many people who actually click on that and see your amazing website. Compare that with…
I can GUARANTEE YOU, that if you have a bad title and description, you are LOSING MASSIVE traffic. With this one change alone we’ve seen over a 300% growth in many websites!
(Just look at those 2 examples above. For that example you can expect a 500% growth in traffic.)
Learn how to invest in digital marketing channels with this article! Don’t miss it!
#3. Home-page Is Digestible In 5 Seconds
We’ve mentioned in our usability checklist pt 1, your website needs to be fast and that people are impatient. In usability, we often talk about the 5-second rule.”
There’s some disagreement over just how many seconds you get, but website visitors are a fickle bunch, and they need to get the basic gist of your home-page in just a few moments.
#4. Clear Path to Company Information
The good old ‘About Us’ page may seem boring, but confidence is important on the web, and people need an easy way to learn more about you.
That’s why when do a Lab41 ‘SitePRO’ supercharge sample we spend most of our focus on a client’s homepage and about page, to deliver the highest results to the client!
#5. Clear Path to Contact Information
It’s also hard to do business if no one can contact you. Visitors want to know that they can get in touch with you if they need to.
Preferably, list your contact information as text (not in an image) – it’ll get picked up by search engines, including local searches.
What’s Next?
Read our next article in the good website design series:
6 Website Navigation Best Practices to Follow
If you want your website to pass these tests, why not try Lab41? Turn your website into a cutting-edge website starting. Request a risk free trial here.
