by ScamperBranding - 14/08/2009

You might have noticed that we’ve recently given our own website design bit of a revamp. In this post, I thought we would share with you our top five tips from redesigning our website:

1. Get to the Point
It might sound obvious, but visitors to your site are on a mission to find something. Help them along by making it immediately obvious what you have to offer. In our case, that’s brand naming and brand design services.

2. A Picture Speaks a Thousand Words
Yes, I know it’s a cliché but it’s true. Make your website visually appealing and show, rather than tell your visitors as much as possible. We cut down the amount of text on our website and made stronger use of imagery to communicate what we do.

3. Make It Accessible
Accessibility isn’t just about complying with regulations. If you want people to find the right information on your site, then you need to design it so that both visitors and search engines can easily read your content and find their way around. Use clear text, language and images, and avoid Flash-based sites that don’t have much or any ‘real’ content. We’ve only got one animation (a simple slideshow our home page), and that uses JavaScript so that it can be viewed on all platforms. Remember, if people can’t find it or see it, then it doesn’t exist.

4. Use a Content Management System
There are still people out there building business websites without a content management system. Okay, there may be a few people out there who don’t really ‘need’ one, but a CMS makes it so much easier to update your website content that it will undoubtedly result in your website being more vibrant, accurate and up-to-date in the long term. We use WordPress as a CMS for our own site as well as many client websites, because it’s incredibly versatile, search engine friendly, and most importantly, has a really easy to use interface.

5. Call to Action
There must be some reason why you want people to visit your website. Maybe you want them to buy something from your e-commerce store, signup to your newsletter, order a brochure, or in our case “Request a Quote”. Whatever you want them to do, make it easy and obvious. Our site now features prominent “Hire Us” and “Request a Quote” buttons, as well as a PDF quote form to simplify the quotation process.

There are obviously many other things you can do to create a successful business website, but these are good for starters. Feel free to comment and suggested your top tips, or if you’d like help creating a fantastic website design for your business then fill out our quote form or call us on 0845 8624442.