1) Call-To-Action (CTA)
What is a CTA (call to action)? Well, it’s almost exactly what it sounds like. When your visitors land on your website, this element of web design should grab their attention. Therefore, your website needs to implement a call to action. This may be in the form of a discount or giveaway offered. The most simple use of a CTA is to collect visitor emails to build your email marketing campaign. A good web design agency knows to implement a CTA so that they can capture reoccurring monthly clients. Comparatively, call to action buttons don’t always have to be implemented in order to collect anything from your visitors. Many times, a call to action is implemented to take a customer to a certain page. Some examples may be a “buy now” button to take them to the product page, or a “book now” to schedule an appointment.
Here is an example of a simple call to action button used to drive customer engagement.
2) Footer
An informational footer is an effective way of displaying vital information about your business without impeding your web design. The footer is almost always located at the bottom of a website. A good web design incorporates an informational footer to display a sitemap, social media profiles, and business contact information. A clear and concise footer is best practice as it will enable the reader to understand the structure of your site, how to best reach you, and follow you on your other social media profiles.
Here are important features to implement in your footer:
- Contact Information
- Site Map
- Google Map of Business Location
- Contact Form
- Social Media Profiles
- About Us/Mission Statement
- Blog Posts
See an example of essential footer elements of web design below. These were implemented using best web design practices.
3) About us
4) Contact information
Often times our clients want us to design a website so that they can increase their appointment request or to have customers request more information about their product or service. Regardless of your business goals, a contact page is probably one of the most important elements of web design to implement on your website. Without it, how are your visitors going to contact you?
A contact page or section usually comes in two forms; a dedicated contact page or a section towards the end of a page designed to get your visitors to fill out the form and learn more about your services.
Another small tip for this element of web design is to include important contact inside of a fixed header or menu. For example, you’ll see on top of this page, we have displayed our phone number, email, and important social media profiles. This way, you’ll be able to contact us instantly when you have questions. It’s best to include many forms of contact information for your visitors. For example, some customers aren’t comfortable speaking on the phone right away and would like to email you instead to get the conversation going. Whatever your business goals are, make sure you are implementing your contact information in your web design.
Here is the ‘Contact’ page from Neil Patel’s website
5) Engaging images
We all love a good visual. These elements of web design are often overlooked. Make sure your web design incorporates engaging images that draw customers to your site and keep them coming back for more.
The visuals can represent your brand or product. Furthermore, they can even represent your movement or the community your business operates in. For example, a restaurant that sponsors their local baseball team would want to display images of their sponsorship and the team on their ‘About Us’ page.
One word of caution is to avoid too many stock images. Nothing turns off people more than ‘fake’. Subsequently, your customers will know you aren’t putting any real effort into your web design.
So we’ve covered the top 5 elements of web design. Now reflect and ask yourself what you need to implement in your web design in order to best engage your visitors. We’ll be ready to help when you’re ready!
