As a small business or startup, your website is your global shop window and needs to reflect your brand, your values and your vision. You’ve done your market research and now that you know exactly what you want to say and who you want to say it too, it’s time to think about design.

Make sure you make the best possible use of design and layout to position your services in the best possible light. Even if you’re using an out of the box theme rather than a custom software solution, it’s possible to make your site stand out from the crowd by taking the time to focus on the little things that can make a big difference.

Remember the audience

Whether you go with a ready-created theme or work with a designer, make sure that the design elements you choose are appropriate for you target audience. If it doubt keep it clean and simple, with easy to read fonts and a format that works across multiple devices and screens.

Keep it clean – but make it a bit different

Clean lines and simple design were the watchwords of 2018 and this trend shows no sign of changing in 2019. But a lot of sites are starting to look, well, just a little bit similar. Take some extra time to research your direct competitors and analyse the elements in their websites that seem to work well. Think about how you can improve on these or which ones really seem to speak to you – if you know something really reflects your brand vision it’s good to incorporate it or better still, think about how you could improve it. Could you mix and match it with something that really makes it sing, play around with positioning, make better use of colour?

Stand out from the crowd

Put yourself in the customer’s shoes. When faced with a choice of 3 or 4 very similar looking websites, why would they choose yours? It could something as simple as the fact that you were the only one who remember to highlight ‘free delivery’ on your beautifully designed front page, or added a price list to your services.

It’s not only words

Yes content is super important – but these days content means more than text. Of course you need great writing that creates the right tone of voice for your brand and effortlessly informs people about your offering. But try supporting dry text with other options. Especially when there’s a lot to get across, people can suffer from text fatigue and move on rather than read pages of information. Have you ever skimmed at high speed through the terms and conditions on a website? There’s a reason why 90% of consumers don’t read the small print.

Go graphic

If there’s something that can be explained more easily in a diagram, use one. Or shareable  infographics can make a lot of information look very user friendly. Don’t forget video, the easiest way to show off product and make things look easy. Remember to keep them short, let people choose their own sound options and consider accessibility like subtitles and text explainers. Don’t forget that these assets can also be shared independently to promote your brand through social channels or blogs, making any investment in them extra good value.