The number of small businesses in Australia is quite staggering, seeing as how 97 percent of all registered enterprises classify as small businesses. Out of this, about 63.8 percent are sole traders while 33.4 percent of them have 1 to 19 employees. Still, even though the majority of these enterprises exist exclusively in the digital environment, the majority of them don’t have a quality website. What kind of design is necessary? Here are several design trends to help you steer clear of this major problem.
A simple logo
When it comes to choosing a logo, simplicity is key to making a strong impression. First of all, you want to pick shapes that your customers will have an easy time discerning.
Second, you need to opt for something that will look great, not only on your website but on product packages and promotional products as well.
Finally, keep in mind that you want a logo that contains icons and symbols related to your industry in order to lower the bounce rate. Designing a logo, however, is not a simple task and you may want to outsource it (even to a freelancer if need be).
Intuitive navigation
One of the most annoying things in web design, as well as one thing that reduces overall customer experience the most, is a counter-intuitive web design or the inability of your audience to know where to go next.
This is what a well-placed call to action (CTA) button is for. In order to help your audience in their exploration of your domain, what you need to do is find a simple method for them to go back and forth between categories and pages.
With the help of intuitive navigation, you’ll be able to do just that.
A part of your digital marketing
The next thing worth mentioning when it comes to your web design is the fact that it has a key role in your digital marketing. Think about it, you’re so invested in making people come to your website that you’ve completely forgotten about what happens when they finally do arrive at your website.
What if they don’t like what they see and what if your marketing led them to expect something else from your website? This is why you need to introduce professionals into your design process.
Ideally, you would have skilled local assistance on your side. For instance, as an NSW enterprise, you could get assistance from a digital agency from Sydney in this process.
Simple checkout process
Perhaps the most important thing when it comes to web design in e-commerce is the issue of the checkout process.
What your audience wants is a seamless shopping experience where they come and make a purchase without having to undergo a lengthy registration procedure, deal with popups and notifications or give away too much private information.
The simpler your checkout process gets, the greater the level of customer satisfaction you’ll face.
Write your own content
Relying on guest bloggers is a great tactic to satisfy both the quantity and quality requirements of your content strategy, however, it’s not the best course of action early on.
What you need to start from is establishing your own identity as a content creator, which usually means making your own content. There is a statistic that an average blog post takes 3 hours and 28 minutes to write but bloggers who are reporting strong results are usually willing to spend more than six hours per post.
While the majority of these posts may be between 500 and 1000 words, don’t be afraid to go for significantly larger formats over 2000 or even 3000 words.
Simplistic design
The first thing you need to understand is that presenting your audience with too much choice right away will make them unable to choose. There was an experiment a while back where people were given a $1 discount on jam and were divided into two groups.
The first group was faced with 6 different varieties of jam, while the second group was offered 24 types of jam to choose from. Needless to say, people from the first group were 10 times as likely to make up their mind.
No, this isn’t something that’s just related to one’s shopping process, it’s the way in which human psychology works and it’s something that you can definitely apply to your design.
As you can see, the principles that you need to abide by are fairly simple and quite effective when used properly. As for their effect on your business, what they can do is give you a chance to be competitive even when compared to much bigger enterprises.