What makes a good website design?

Capturing visual impact

The first thing you’ll likely notice when visiting a website is how good (or bad) it looks. This relates to the Three-Second Rule, which states how a design must grab attention immediately before a user scrolls away.

When we meet with potential clients, we often hear how they don’t like the design of their current website. Often, they say things like “it just doesn’t make me feel good when I visit it” or “it doesn’t look very professional, I’m afraid it’s turning people away from us.” This hesitation and potential lack of trust from potential customers is a huge issue.

The other part is that a website built without a plan means visitors aren’t likely to be engaged or know where to find things. A clear Call to Action (CTA) is an important step that’s often overlooked.

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So how does Websites Made With Love tackle these issues?

When we meet with clients on our free 30-minute clarity call, we usually start by asking these types of questions:

Do you have a current website?
What do you like about it?
What are the major pain points in your opinion?
What are you hoping it will help you with that it currently isn’t?
What is the main goal of the website, in your eyes?

Going forward, clients are asked to fill out a short questionnaire that gives more details on their website goals and how we can help.

We first design a homepage and reveal it to the client before building out any other pages. This allows us to test the Three Second Rule and emotional response through their reaction. Is it hitting the right points? Is the CTA doing the right job? Once that is locked in and everyone is happy, we move to the remaining pages.

Pushing the boundaries of creativity

There are some things you just expect to see when you visit a website. The navigation should be at the top of the page, clicking the logo should lead back to the homepage, and if you scroll to the bottom of the page, there will be a footer with some extra info.

But, you want more. It’s your website, after all.

That’s why at WMWL, we aren’t afraid to step outside the box. We use a premium theme and plugins not commonly used by others in our field on Vancouver Island. This allows us more opportunities to create a custom website that no one else has seen before. Our rates are competitive and offer great value.

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Plus, we love a good challenge.

Have an idea? Let’s talk and come up with a solution.

We’ve helped clients with generating membership cards, custom pricing for products in different physical store locations (buy online, pick up in person), and incorporating existing tools the client uses (like Google Sheets) to display on the website behind a password-protected page so that the right people can view it at their leisure.

Prioritizing purpose and functionality

Some websites are absolutely stunning. But they just don’t work. Sorry, but that doesn’t work for us either.

Being able to use a website is just as important as how it looks. A good website is easy to navigate, so users can find what they need without friction or confusion. This relates to accessibility, too. Is your design inclusive to those with different abilities and devices? The easiest way to measure functionality is to look at the results: is it doing what you expected it to do? Are you getting leads? Is your phone ringing less with questions that your website now answers?

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Accessibility is a big one in our books.

Having a website that is accessible to those who use screen readers and other assistive technologies is important to us. We’ve researched a ton of accessibility plugins and have proudly partnered with the best one we found.

Mastery in execution and detail

The devil’s in the details, as they say. Good thing we’re (casual) perfectionists.

What’s a casual perfectionist? It’s a term I just made up. While we prefer to have crisp logos, optimized load speeds, high-res imagery, and other features, it can be hard to get it 100% of the time. That doesn’t mean we cut corners. It means that if you have a logo and a limited budget, we’ll work with what you have to produce the best website we can.

Premium tools for a premium job.

But, we’re prepared. We have a library of high-resolution stock images, a graphic designer to help you create your logo and branding, a top caching plugin, and we build each website to be optimized for both SEO and responsive design.

Before the website gets revealed to you, it gets looked over by everyone on our team. We ask each other for feedback, challenge design choices, and come up with a result that we think you’ll absolutely love.

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Aligning with brand identity

Did you spend $10,000 on an elaborate brand strategy? You know, that PDF file that has your logo, font choices, colours, and all the details. If you have it, we’ll use it. If not, we can make you a mini version, so you have something to base your other professional marketing materials on.

A website should complement your brand’s voice and message, and be recognizable. People should know when they visit your website that it is your brand. Consistency throughout your marketing materials using a brand guideline is the key.

Homepages that speak to your brand

Going back to our first point, we use the home page reveal meeting to hit this mark. Does it feel like your brand? If we removed the logo, does it still “feel” like the right website? These things are important not only to you, but to our team at Websites Made With Love.

Award-winning website designs

We’ve built over 100 websites in just the last few years, and are happy to say, we are proud of every single one of them. Each build is a chance for us to expand our skills and help out another business reach its goals.

Every now and then, we get nice emails letting us know we’ve been nominated and have won website design awards. We are incredibly proud and humbled. Hey, it’s nice when your hard work gets noticed, right? If you’d like to check out our portfolio, you can do so here.

Another great resource is this page: Best Designs on DesignRush. You can check out many non-WMWL examples of nicely designed websites and ask yourself how they tackled the topics we discussed in this blog article.

And, hey, if you’re looking for help with your website, branding, marketing, or SEO, let’s chat!