It’s the beginning of the year, and it’s the perfect time to reinvent branding, look for new processes, and revamp some old materials. For businesses, this can include a new website design. Doing so not only helps improve your business’ branding and presence online but also can help Google and other search engines better assess your website and content. The design of your website is crucial to your business goals and success!
For companies of any size, online presence is the biggest key to conversions and revenue growth. It’s suggested that you update your website once per quarter. This helps ensure that your site’s content is up-to-date and relays correct information about your business. Keeping your website fresh also helps create a better user experience for your audience and improves your chances of earning a new audience.
When creating or refreshing a website, there are several key qualities you should keep in mind: is your website informative, responsive across devices, ADA compliant, and focused on the user experience? In 2024, we set out to accomplish all of these and more with our latest website redesign of LCS.com. Here’s what we did and how you can do the same.
Inform Your Audience of Your Business
A website aims to inform and convert prospective customers and users. E-commerce sites are intended to inform and quickly convert their audiences to buy their product straight from the site. There are also more informative business sites that point customers to services, brands, and more. Representing your brand and products and communicating effectively with your customers are important to your business. Your website should be fresh and modern and clearly communicate your mission, values, and offerings to your audience within seconds.
To accomplish this, your website content, or copy, should be clear and concise. It should go over all of your products and services and use plain language to communicate a value statement to your target audience. Within moments, viewers should understand why they should buy your product or work with your company. You can also utilize branding elements, such as colors, messaging, images, and even a modern layout and format to represent your business subliminally. Ensuring your branding is cohesive throughout your site will also communicate clearly to your customers and help you stand out.
LCS Web Design Services creates sites with your business in mind. From your branding, colors, and values, we put this at the front of each website we design. We recently launched a new design, rebrand, of our own website, https://www.lcs.com/. Our new site was refreshed content, a modern look, and some updates to our branding to help our customers quickly know who we are and what we do.
Responsive Across All Devices
For the best experience, websites need to be adaptable across devices. Whether this be on tablets, phones, or desktops, having a website that can adapt to the screen size of the user’s device will allow key elements of your site to be seen.
People, on average, spend at least 8 hours on their desktops and mobile phones. As people spend more and more time online, ensuring your website is informative, representative of your brand, and that it cultivates a good user experience is imperative.
With that said, mobile devices make up over 60% of website traffic. Designing your website with mobile in mind is imperative to influence how your users interact with your information and brand. Ensure that your website is responsive on mobile devices, so you avoid making a poor first impression.
ADA Compliant on Your Website
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires that websites have reasonable accommodations for customers and employees with disabilities to prevent discrimination. To be ADA compliant means that your website is user-friendly as well as accessible to everyone.
When updating your website, being ADA-compliant can include several aspects that make your website easier to navigate for people with visual and auditory impairments. Here are just some of the things you can do to make sure your design is ADA-compliant:
Ensure that your site can be navigated with a keyboard and screen reader
Use proper heading tags in site copy (H1, H2, etc.) and make sure they are in numerical order to avoid confusion when using a screen reader
Provide text transcripts for videos, and/or include captions within videos
Properly label all images with “Alt Text” that describes the purpose and content of each image
This is not a full list of the ADA compliance guidelines, and there are different levels of compliance websites can adhere to. Your site should be accessible to the widest possible audience, so take the time to design with accessibility in mind.
At LCS we design our websites with the ADA guidelines at the forefront of each design. We know how important it is to design for everyone and make websites that are accessible and usable. We did this with our new website update, as well, making sure it is accessible by screen readers and has visual contrast to be easy to read. All while ensuring our brand and key information, like our products and services, were highlighted throughout the site.
Importance of UX in Web Design
The user experience of your website is how a viewer feels when interacting with it. UX in web design involves addressing the viewer’s needs and designing the website and content to meet those needs. No matter what industry your small business is in, you will need to ask a few key questions before you update your website with UX in mind:
Why is my viewer or prospect coming to my website? (Making a purchase, seeking information, etc.)
What information is most important to the viewer?
What does the viewer find enjoyable in a product?
To design effectively for UX, you’ll need to create consumer personas to envision who will be using your website. This will helpfocus on creating the best experience possible for that user. You should also make sure to put crucial information front and center on the home page. As well as making your navigation to other pages easy with clearly labeled buttons and paths to each page. Also, ensure the viewer has multiple opportunities to achieve their goal on your website by adding call-to-action buttons throughout each page; and don’t forget about aesthetics throughout the site! UX also encompasses visual aspects of design and branding, like color palette and voice. If your site is visually pleasing and answers your customers’ key questions, they’re more likely to have a positive experience with your brand.
Design Your Website with LCS
LCS’ Web Services team helped to refresh our new site, and their expertise can extend to your business, too. From ADA compliance to designing with our business values and products in mind, we created a website for our consumers to know who we are and why we do what we do.
If you’re interested in a new website or updating your site for a more modern and user-friendly experience, work with LCS Web Design and Development Services. LCS offers an affordable way to give your company a beautiful, responsive, and ADA-compliant website with dedicated customer support. Check out our new website for an example of what LCS Web Services can create, and learn more about our Web Design Services offerings.
