Before jumping straight into the topic I just wanted to ask you some questions:

1. Can a visitor or stranger determine the nature of your business within the 4 to 5 seconds on landing on your homepage?
2. Is your navigation easy enough to lead the visitor to the desired content within 2 or 3 clicks?
3. Can a visitor notice your major products and services in the first glimpse?
4. Is your tagline or taglines are attractive enough to take your prospect to the next step?
5. What is the bounce rate of your website? Is it acceptable or high or maybe too high?

If your answers to those questions are not satisfactory then you need to have a serious look at your current web design if you want to excel in the UAE market.

Here are the 10 Tips to Design a Website in the UAE Market:

1. Develop a Strategy

You should develop a strategy and your strategy should be based on the customer journey. Better take feedback from your existing customers or get reviews from other people. The website should answer all the questions a prospect could have before converting into a customer. The content, the navigation, and all the information that you are planning to serve them are considered as the customer journey. You should lay down a path through which a prospect will lead to conversion.

2. Play around the Fold

You have a very short window of 5 to 8 seconds to convince a visitor that he/she can find the desired information in your website. So many studies showed that the people, in general, don’t prefer to explore further than the two screenfuls. The main landing screen or the very first screen a visitor views upon reaching your website is the most important and requires more planning and efforts than any other section of the web design.

3. Keep it Simple and Small

Always put precise content and information. There have been so many researches on Hick’s Law, which is that if you present fewer options to choose, the customers will buy more but if you provide them with more options the customers are less likely to make a purchase. Similar applies to web designs as well. If you provide them with too many similar products and services or packages and plans, they are less likely to convert.

4. Simple Navigation

Make your navigation more accessible and less complex. Avoid putting large lists on the menu. Try to use organize things in categories and sub-categories but tag them with easy-to-understand words/phrases. Avoid clicks and use scrolling. Arrange and organize the menu items, and various sections of the web design and try to maintain a continuous flow of information rather mixed and random information. We have noticed a huge rise in online conversions when we replaced our ordinary clickable navigation interface landing page with a 20 times longer scrollable navigation interface landing page.

5. Use Visual Aid to Direct the Attentions

The web design should guide and lead visitors through the customer journey. Everything should resonate and work in harmony in order to get the desired results. Web designers use various types of visual aids and graphical clues to direct visitors’ attention. There have been so many studies on this and they have found that the people tend to look into the same direction as they see other people looking into. Another ordinary but very important visual clue is to put arrows, or signs, or something and people will look more into the direction it is pointing to. Such things can be used to direct visitors through the desired customer journey.

6. Don’t Mind the White Spaces

Having white spaces is widely accepted now. Even minimalists web designs are also in trend these days. Never get afraid of the white spaces, in fact, most of the designers are using white spaces to highlight some design elements. The white space enhances the readability of web design. It also helps highlighting something, you can easily add weight to a certain design element or a tag or something adding white spaces around it. Though it is always suggested that overuse of white spaces will cause the visitors to lose interest in the web design.

7. Use Graphics Wisely

These days everyone is in a hurry and people tend to read less and love to view more. So, it is always suggested to use appropriate graphics, animations, photos and images to make your design more alive and interactive. People love to interact with other people, different studies suggested using a real person’s photo can boost online conversions instantly. But make sure whatever photo or animation or graphics you are using should be relevant, descriptive and well placed in the web design. Another very important thing to consider is the modern internet audience is very allergic to the stock photos, the brain can instantly distinguish between a real person’s real photo and a stock photo. So, it is always advised to use real photos instead of stock photos.

8. Never Compromise on Site Speed

This is the most neglected thing in the web design industry. Customer usually and the web designers very often neglect the website speed or page load time while designing web designs. But in reality, the page speed directly impacts everything from user experience, site bounce rate and online conversions, everything can be impacted heavily by site speed or page load time. If the website takes longer to load the users will simply leave it, even the search engine takes it as a negative and degrade such websites with higher load times.

9. Mobile Compatibility & Responsiveness

More than 90% of the population in UAE own a smartphone. Having your website optimized for smartphones compatibility or having a responsive web design is very important. As per numerous studies and researches almost 50 to 60 per cent users never return to the site if they face difficulties in viewing it in the smartphone. Having a responsive web design with a multi-lingual user interface and fast loading will always give you a competitive edge.

10. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Friendly Web Design

Always prefer a search engine optimization (SEO) friendly web design approach. Everyone these days tries to find out the desired information from the search engines. Your website should be in-line with the search engine policies and requirements. Above mentioned factors are also help raising your ranks in the search engine results pages along with a strong backlinks profile, necessary meta tags and interlinking could help you score higher ranks in the search engine which could dramatically boost your sales.

Conclusion

Defining a user journey prior to the designing is very helpful in boosting user experience. The web design should be designed to serve a particular purpose rather just random information. The navigation, content, visual and graphics and everything should be strategically selected to boost customer journey and experience to achieve the online conversions goal. The web design should be responsive and smartphone compatible. You should never compromise on the site load time or page speed. Search Engine Optimization or SEO is the key factor in generating a continuous stream of organic traffic to your website. Never hesitate to take the professional help of IT experts like RSI Concepts. If you have any question please feel free to approach us through the below comment box.

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