A website needs to be intuitive and user-friendly in order to be successful. Boost your conversion rate by streamlining your web design!

The average person spends 10-20 seconds on a website. Visitors leave a site if they can’t find the value of your business within 10 seconds.

Can you easily find the information you need from your current website?

If your site is a wall of text describing every detail of your business complete with complicated navigation, you’ll want to consider streamlining your website’s design.

Not only are these websites frustrating but they scare off potential customers and viewers. Whether you’re a small-medium business (SMB) owner, employee, freelancer, or what have you, you want an inviting website.

Today, web design is about streamlining the user experience by incorporating intuitive design. The design and layout of your website should allow visitors to easily find what your business is about, products and services you have to offer, and make them want to visit your site again.

Do you need to streamline your current web site? Check out these 5 design tips for streamlining your website.

What is Intuitive Design?

Quality intuitive design should appear to be invisible. This means visitors can complete tasks without disruption. 

Poor intuitive design is noticeable. It’s one of the first things your site visitors will notice and it will distract them from whatever task they’re trying to complete.

The hard part with intuitive design is it doesn’t work for everyone. What design works for one person doesn’t always work for another. An example is a website aiming to sell fashion products to 20-year-olds will be (and should be) designed differently than a website marketing retirement insurance policies for retirees.

To create a well-designed intuitive website, you need to know your audience.

1.  Do Your Market Research

Knowing your audience goes beyond just the demographics. You need an idea of what their current knowledge and target audience is.

There are two main types of knowledge you need to know about your potential customers before streamlining your website to be intuitive.

“Current knowledge” is what your audience has from previous website experiences. “Target knowledge” is what you hope your visitors will gain from using your website interface. You and web designer must connect the two to create an intuitive web design that works.

This is where market research comes in handy. The goal of market research is to find your visitors' purpose for visiting your website. From here, you’ll be able to figure out which webpages you want your visitors to see right away and what actions you want them to take.

Intuitive web design helps visitors find what they’re looking for right away and pique their interest in your business.

2.  Do You Know Your Target Audience?

Who’s going to be using your website?

An established company knows who its target audience is and how to keep them interested. When streamlining your website, you’ll need a good idea of who’s going to be using your website.

If you’re unsure of your target audience, you’ll need to do some research. Your target audience should be a narrowed group of people with some common demographics. These demographics include age, gender, profession, interests, family, location, and more.

The better you know your target audience, the better your website will be. You’ll be streamlining your website to cater to their interests and needs.

For example, a business that sells reading glasses may have a target audience of middle-aged and older adults. This business will want to create an easy-to-use website with a larger font for headings and a few links that are easy to find.

A website that caters to its target audience will make visitors feel at home and keep them interred in your site.

3.  Streamlining Your Website Content

Do you like reading dense blocks of text when you visit a website? If not, you’ll want to focus on quality over quantity when it comes to copy.

Since the majority of people spend less than a minute on a site, they don’t have time to read a wall of text describing every detail of your business.

Keep information short and sweet by sticking to what your business is about, the products/services you have to offer, and what sets you apart from the competition. Keep it short and to the point.

Incorporating keywords naturally into your copy to improve search engine optimization (SEO). This will help your website pop up in search engines. Just be careful to not repeat yourself or make your text dry and boring.

Write an intriguing text that keeps visitors interested. Use your company’s unique and active voice in your copy.

Adding headings and easy-to-read font styles can break up and organize text. Not only will your text appear aesthetically pleasing but it makes finding information easier.

If there’s more information you wish to add regarding your market but is not imperative to your business, consider adding a blog or video page.

Streamlining your website’s copy will make site visitors happy and are likelier to refer to your site or business in the future.

4.  Navigation and Search Features

When streamlining your website, the design of your navigation bar or menu will determine your site's usability.

Do you remember how annoying it is to use a website that makes finding what you’re looking for a challenge?

The last thing you’ll want to do with your website is to make your visitors feel frustrated. Streamlining a website requires cutting down your main links to 7 or fewer links. The links you do keep should take visitors to the most used pages.

Popular links to consider are a Home Page, Products/Services Page, About Page, and Informational/Contact Page. Of course, your links can change depending on your type of business

Just like your content you will want to keep your links short and to the point.

5.  Cut the Unnecessary Features

Fancy features and links may seem like a good idea, but they can be distracting and annoying to visitors. Streamlining your website requires keeping your website simple.

Each webpage should focus on one particular topic. A “Products” page contains concise information on your products, basic features, and pricing. Eliminating extra features such as social media and contact us links on this page minimizes distraction.

Users looking for your social media links or contact page can find a link in your navigation that will take them to a webpage that focuses on contacting your business.

Streamlining your web design by cutting out the extras makes webpage loading times faster and promotes easier indexing.

Both you and your visitors will appreciate a website that is focused, concise, and simple to navigate.

Give Your Website a Makeover!

With these 5 web design tips in mind, streamlining your website will be a breeze. You’ll find more people using your website and eventually gain more customers.

Have more questions about web design and improving your website? We’re here to help you with any project. Drop us a line and let’s get brainstorming!