In the world of website design there are a number of ‘do’s and don’ts’ that have to be considered in order for a website to serve its purpose well and attract enquiries from potential customers or impart information to interested parties. As is mentioned elsewhere on this site, research has shown that website viewers have a 3 second attention span and if they’re not ‘hooked’ by your website within that small timeframe they will go to the website of one of your competitors.

The key, therefore, is to have a website that instantly grabs the interest of the viewer and holds it for a sufficient amount of time for the viewer to engage with what you are promoting, be it goods, services or information. We cover logical website navigation elsewhere on this site but another key factor is visual impact. Remember, your website is basically your shop front and online viewers are passing trade: they won’t be tempted ‘inside’ your business if the shop front is not enticing with a good window display etc. So if you imagine your website as a traditional shop front, what do you think would draw-in passing trade? Obviously a shop front displaying reams of text won’t do it as no one would be prepared to read through it all in order to see if there’s something of interest to them and a broken window, shop sign with peeling paint or no reference to what the shop is selling on the frontage would be equally as unappealing.

In a website design setting, therefore, what is required is a design that isn’t over verbose with long-winded passages of text and contains visually eye-catching images that depict your services, some of your goods or premises etc depending upon the nature of your business or organisation. This is where the key element of graphical/image quality comes into play. Nothing will give an instant bad impression on a website like poor images and graphics. Unfortunately, a large number of website fall right into the trap of ‘having a friend’s son who can do websites’, for example, and resulting in a very cheap website that is so poorly designed that potential viewers will just go elsewhere. Furthermore, taking the budget approach of taking photographs of premises, staff, goods etc on mobile phones and scanning images from brochures, logos from business cards etc and mounting them on a website will equally lead to a very, very poor and amateurish result . . . surely defeating the object of having a website in the first place?

All website, of course, must have some graphical content and the golden rule is that these must be of a high quality. Think back to our shop front analogy; would you open a shop where the signage was written with a felt tip to save money on a professional sign writer? It is relatively inexpensive to get a professional website design company to integrate quality images into your website largely by the following methods:

1. Photography: if you require actual photographs of your premises, staff, facilities, goods etc, ask your website designers if they provide onsite photography services
2. Stock Images: website designers will know of various image archives for which copyright licenses can be acquired for use on your website. These archives can often be viewed by clients so that the images required can be viewed jointly prior to their purchase
3. Graphic Design: a professional website design company will have graphic design skills and will be able to produce graphics/logos etc ‘from scratch’ to your specifications
4. From the Printer: many businesses have logos created and letterheads etc from which pertinent bits can be extracted for website design and copies of the graphic files themselves can usually be obtained upon request from the printers

If you follow the above principles you will be on your way to a visually appealing website that will promote your goods and/or services to our potential client base and not defeat the object of promoting your business online from the outset!