You need to be asking yourself – what is the thing that will draw a visitor to stay on my WordPress website? They probably already have a whole bunch of tabs open, and there has to be something that will interest them in browsing what you have to offer. The fact is that this decision is made in seconds, and it’s based on how they react to your website’s design. It’s the first thing that will make them form an impression before they check out your headlines and content. So how do you make your design good enough for them to stick around?
Consider responsive design
Responsive design means that your website can adjust to every screen size and platform. Since we are living in a world where everyone has a smartphone that they use to browse the internet, mobile-first design is a requirement for every website today. The statistics say that 80% of internet users owns a smartphone. The truth is simple – it’s a must to have a design that works well on various devices. While it does require a lot of work and testing, it’s not something that you can just omit. Luckily, responsive design is no longer a hard thing to implement.
Use the right colors
The way your website is colored certainly leaves an impression. The fact is that every color has a psychological effect on people, so you need to be smart when you use them. When you choose a color for your design, it sets a particular tone, and forms expectations. In order to get it right, you can pick an accent color. With consistent use of two main colors for your website, the third can be the one that stands out and attracts attention. It’s the color that you are going to use to underline important buttons and information. As for your main colors, it’s best that you don’t go for more than two, with black or grey text.
Make it easy to get to the desired content
The fact about content is that people are looking for a particular thing when they visit your website, and then they are probably gone. Research has shown that it takes them 59 seconds to decide whether they are going to stay or leave. The reason why they often leave is because they cannot find what they are looking for right away. This is why it is necessary for you to design your website so that doing just that is as easy as possible. Poor layouts, search options, and content are factors that will certainly throw people away. Your main task is to make it simple to find out which part of your site has what they are looking for. Your navigation has to be user-friendly, and everything has to be labelled correctly.
Tell a story with images
Today it’s quite simple to find the right images to make your content more attractive. If you are looking for great images that you can use for free, use compfight.com to search through Creative Commons images on Flickr. Keep in mind the fact that you have to use them with attribution, so read the license and give credit where it’s necessary. If you are willing to pay for a good photo, a source such as iStockPhoto.com could be a great choice for you. As long as you are allowed by the license, you can crop the images with your favorite image editor the way you like. Optimizing the images is an essential step for your website. You need to think about the size, and save them at the lowest resolution that doesn’t affect their clarity, in order to make sure that they don’t affect your website’s loading speed.
Pick the right fonts
The choice of fonts for your website is essential. You’ll surely want to go for custom fonts, rather than generic default ones, such as Arial, Times Roman, and Verdana. However, seasoned web design pros argue that it’s important to pick the fonts that reflect your brand and image. You want them to have personality and make your website content look more authentic. In order to find the right custom fonts that you want to use, you will be looking for them on a third-party website. If you are on a budget, you can make use of a service like Typekit. Otherwise, Google Font API has a variety of fonts that are free.
In summation
If you want to keep visitors on your website, you need to make it enticing, while at the same time simple and intuitive. Elements such as images, fonts, and colors are of an essence. Put a little effort into optimizing your pages, and you will surely draw your audience’s attention enough for them to stay.