The studies have shown that it requires only a few milliseconds to build an impression of a brand in the visitor’s mind when they first land on a website. This has a huge impact on the brand and its reputation. The website has two major components one is the web design and the second is the content, both should work in harmony to deliver a remarkable customer experience and customer journey. The design builds the first impression and the content make it last. The businesses treat the web design and website content as two different things, but that is not true. Consider the web design as the structure of a building and the content as its interior. The tenants will only come if the both the structure and interior are good. Similarly for the website the web design and the content both from a user interface to provide good user experience and convenient user journey.

Here is a guide that will help you in choosing a good web design in 2021:

Step 1. Set Objectives and Goals

There are several compelling reasons to choose a new web design for your website in 2021. It requires a little bit of research to determine what is the purpose of changing your existing web design?And what you want to achieve from choosing a new web design? Here are a few questions that you should ask to yourself to set your goals and objectives for the new web design:

1. Do you want to generate more leads from your website?
2. Do you want to increase your website sales or do you want to increase the website conversions?
3. Do you want to reduce the bounce rate?
4. Do you want to increase your website traffic?
5. Do you want to improve the user experience?
6. Do you want to make your website mobile friendly?
7. Do you want to update your website content?
8. Do you want to add multimedia content?
9. Do you want to launch a new brand identity?
10. Do you want to improve functionalities of your website?

If you say ‘yes’ to any of the above questions or to multiple questions, then your new web design should be chosen to achieve your goals. For example if you want to generate more leads from your website then your web design should be more business oriented, the homepage design and the internal pages should be optimized to achieve maximum lead generation. If you want to increase your website sales or online conversions, then the web design should be prepared to focus on customer journey and the purchase cycle should be improved to improve website conversion rate.

Similarly if you want to increase traffic, or want to perform well in the search, you need a search engine friendly or SEO friendly web design. If you want to enhance mobile experience you should choose a responsive web design. If your content is outdated or you want to update the content or want to add multimedia content in the website then the design must be designed in way that it can support the new content very well. If your brand identity got changed then the entire website and online presence should be updated as per the new brand identity.

Read More: Why Your Small Business Needs a Website?

Step 2. Check if the Web Design have all the Right Ingredients

Once you have finalized the goal and objectives of choosing a new web design, the next step is to check if the web design you are selecting have all the right ingredients or not? That is very important. The problem is that there is no separate checklist available for each goal. However, there are certain generic features which are absolutely necessary for each and every web design and these features can also help business and organization to achieve any goal. Here are the important features and functionalities that each and every website must have to be successful in 2021-2022:

Excellent Homepage Design

The homepage is a web design is equal to an engine in a car, without a healthy and strong engine a car couldn’t go far. That is because the homepage is the page which gets the most of the website traffic, a majority of the online website traffic lands on the homepage first and then navigates to the inner pages. The homepage of a web design acts as a gateway or reception of the business. It would be the first impression for a huge chunk of your prospects and new visitors. The homepage can be divided into various sections or chunks. Usually businesses have a long vertical scroll homepages in Dubai and all around the UAE and that is also very trendy now a days. Here are some sections of the homepage and what you should be looking to have in them:

• Header: The header of a website is the top area having business logo, menu and navigation, and in some cases the contact details too.
• Hero Area: This area is referred to the areas under the header, usually this area contains an image slider or a video content in it. This is the area which got the most focus when a user land on the website, so it has to have great imagery and attractive taglines.
• Body: The body is the section that starts underneath the hero area and stretched towards the last section of the page. It contains introduction, products/services listing, other appealing content, trust signals and in some cases contact forms too.
• Footer: The footer is referred to the very last section of the web page. It contains contact details, useful internal links, trust markers, and in some cases small contact forms too.

Each area of the homepage should offer certain features and the entire homepage content should be organized in a way to form a smooth user journey from top to the bottom of the web page. Apart from these sections the homepage must have certain features which will make it appealing and effective. Here are some key elements and features that a homepage web design must have:

1. Prominent Branding Elements

The branding is a very powerful element, a brand is recognized with their branding. For a web design and the homepage design the branding should follow the logo of the business or organization. The logo is the brand identity, customers and audiences knows a brand by its logo, for example think of the McDonald logo or KFC logo or Amazon Logo, whenever you see them you immediately understand what it means and which business it will be. Similarly at a homepage the logo should be visible and the logo’s theme should be projected throughout the web design.

2. Attractive Color Scheme

The color scheme is also an essential part of the branding. The colors can make or break user experience, too light color makes it harder to read, too dark colors make the look dull, the color scheme should have a perfect balance and the colors should clearly represent the logo and branding theme. The homepage color scheme and theme will be the theme of the entire website, so it has to be unique, appealing and pleasant for the users.

3. Content, Images and Multimedia

The textual content, images and multimedia content should clearly portray the brand, rather than having images and multimedia as a filler these things should be part of the customer journey and user experience. The images and multimedia content should represent the brand, it should communicate the brand’s vision, mission and value proposition effectively. The textual content should have attractive taglines, accurate and short descriptions and very simple and easy-to-understand language.

4. Unique and Highly Readable Typography

The typography or fonts are the most important thing in any web design. Whenever a user land on a website they seek some information or a solution to their problem. The images, branding and graphics can help increase their engagements but the textual content will remain the most powerful influence on the visitors’ decision. The typography or fonts should be unique and highly readable.

5. Compelling Call to Action (CTA)

The call to action is the most important part of a user interface. If a business wants the visitor to perform a certain action the CTA or call to action is used. For example if the business wants the visitors to sign-up or to make a purchase or to request a quote or any other required function that can converts them, the CTA is used. It has to be clearly visible, repeated in multiple places strategically and it should have eye-catchy tag on it.

6. Easy Navigation and Internal Links

The homepage is just a doorway the rest of the website content is always scattered on the internal pages. That is why we use website navigation to let the users to reach to the information that is buried in the internal pages. The homepage should have a menu which can let the user to navigate to internal pages easily. All the menu items should be organized and easily accessible. The homepage can also have internal links on multiple sections as the body section of the homepage can have a lot of wide space which can be have elements, graphics or sections that can be linked with internal pages. This significantly increase the user experience and website performance in the search engines.

7. Trust Signal

The homepage should be able to gain trust of the visitors. There are several trust signals which vary from business to business but ideally the homepage should have at least three different and very prominent trust signals. For example, the customer reviews or client testimonials, the security badges, the business partners’ logos and the client’s name are a few of the very popular trust signals.

8. Business and Team Information

The business information, story, about section, mission and vision statements and such details are very important and help gaining trust of the visitors and are also very helpful in building brand reputation. Some business often publish their team’s details on the website, if not all of the employees at least the CEO or MD or top management is enough. The trust signals and business information are very helpful and improve customer’s trust and confidence on the brand.

Separate Internal Pages

There was a time when the single page websites gain traction, but such websites are only impactful for a very specific businesses and industry sectors. Only the multi-page websites are the ideal solution which is equally impactful for all industries and business sectors. It is important that the web design you choose have separate internal pages designed dedicatedly to serve a particular purpose. For example the About page is used to provide business background and information about the business and its top management. It also includes mission and vision statements and future plans of the business along with some details about their journey and success. The products/services pages are separate, the category page lists all the internal or sub-categories and the listings of the products and services offered by the business or organizations.

The dedicated product or service page is associated to a single product or service and often more customer centric and focused on the customer journey. The PR page or Blogs are for news, information, press releases and such publications. The contact page is to provide all the contact details, location maps of the business and its regional offices or branches and so on. All pages are different and serve a specific purpose. Hence it is important to have separate internal pages for each purpose. The header and footer sections are usually common throughout the entire website and the web design of the inner pages follow the same color scheme, fonts and typography, and overall theme of the homepage.

Read More: 5 Strategies to Build Online Brand Identity in 2021

Responsive and Mobile Friendly Web Design

The smartphones and mobile searches have already surpassed the traditional computers and laptops. The modern day audience is heavily focused on smartphones. The rise of powerful smartphone and mobile devices, availability of high speed internet, and social media have completely changed the modern day marketing landscape. Each and every web design has to be responsive and mobile friendly. A responsive web design is programmed in a way that it can automatically detect the device and platform it is being accessed from and without even letting the user notice it the web design renders and rearrange itself to fit as per the screen size. This is what we called responsive web design. There are several other aspects too, such as the responsive web design should ensure the unified customer journey and customer experience on both the regular computers and also on the mobile devices to make sure the customers never get confused of anything or so. The responsive web designs are also ranked higher in the search and can get more organic website traffic from the search engines.

Read More: 6 Tips to Use Social Media for Local Business

Step 3. Make sure the Web Design is SEO Friendly

Once all the features are selected the next step is to make the web design SEO friendly. The SEO or Search Engine Optimization is making a design more in-line with the search engine guidelines and standards. The major search engine guidelines are set by Google since it has 92% to 94% of the search market share, rest of the search engine also follows the same standards. The SEO friendly web design must offer the content and design which is readable for the search engine. The search engines like Google, MSN and Yahoo use automated software programs, called crawlers or spiders these data crawlers go through each website and its internal pages, usually they land at the homepage and from there they find links for the internal pages and scan them too. The purpose is to enlist all of the available websites and their internal pages and content. The search engine then process these links and their content through artificial intelligence based algorithms who decide a primary topic or subject of a webpage and then index them in their broader repository. Whenever someone searches in the Google or any other search engine the search result page returns the links from that repository.

The position of those links is also controlled by these algorithms, the Google and other search engines rank different websites and web pages on the bases of their content, web design, user experience, loading speed, mobile experience and a lot many other parameters. In order to rank well in those search result pages the web design must complies with the rules and standards set up by the search engines. The basic rule is to make a web design which offers good user experience and it’s all content and links should be readable by the website visitors as well as by the search engine data crawlers. Some web designs use technologies and source code which is unreadable for these data crawlers, so for the crawlers there is no content or link but in reality there is a link and content available for the user. This could completely ruin the SEO and search engine rankings of a website. So, the web design must use programming technologies and designing tools which complies with the search engines and let them read the web page and its source code as well. This is very important as for an average website almost 70% to 80% of its traffic is coming from the search engines, which is completely organic. The organic website traffic is absolutely free and can be a game changer for a business’s online success.

Read More: Why businesses need Mobile Apps?

Step 4. Check the Loading Speed of the Web Design

The loading speed of a web design is critically important it affects the user experience and it also affects the SEO. If a web page take more than 3 to 5 seconds to load, the chances are almost 80% of the users will leave without waiting and search for other websites. Does this means the customers are impatient? No, it doesn’t mean the customers are impatient, but almost all major website which are being used by the ordinary people loads within the 3 to 5 second range. This sets up a trend, and customers now expect the same from your webpages too. There are several factors that can impact your web design’s loading speed, such as:

• Images/Media Size
• Older Image Formats
• External Resources in the Web Design
• Too Long Web Pages
• Poorly Organized Source Code
• Older Technologies and Frameworks
• Slow Server and Content Delivery Network/System
• Incompatibility with the Modern Browsers

These are the most common mistakes that usually a web designer made. Make sure your web design doesn’t have any of these issues. Apart from the hosting speed, rest of everything is related to the web design. These days ordinary image formats such as PNG or JPEG are being replaced by SVG and WebP, etc. The videos can also be optimized in similar fashion. The programing and scripts that are running in the background could also impact the loading speed. Some web designs use a lot of external resources. It means that the images or fonts or scripts or CSS the web page is running on is not hosted in the same server where the entire website is being hosted. This could significantly increase the load time. The loading speed of the web design should be optimized by using modern techniques and tools. The web design should be able to load as quickly as possible or at least its loading speed should be equal or less than five seconds.

Read More: What is the difference between hosting, cloud and data centers?

Step 5. Check the Compatibility with the Content Management System (CMS)

The Content Management System or CMS is a software tool that is used by webmasters to publish content on the websites. The CMS is important for modern day’s websites as the websites are also serving as a digital communication tool with the customers and broader audiences. The businesses and organizations have to keep their websites up-to-date. Moreover the businesses and organizations also require to amend/update existing content along with new publications. A CMS makes the website management very simple and convenient for the non-technical or non-programmers. There are so many different CMSs available in the market. Some of them are free and open source some are paid. No matter which CMS a business is using, it is important that the new web design they choose is compatible with their existing CMS. If you are a new startup or looking for a complete revamp of the entire website, you can also choose a CMS. For businesses and organizations who are operating at a medium level, the free and open-source CMS such as WordPress, Joomla and Drupal are a good option. For business working on a large scale and require intensive work on the websites and need high-end security, it is always good to acquire a closed-source and customized CMS, such as RSI CMS [LINK].

The web design you are choosing should be compatible with the CMS you already have or are planning to go with. If a web design is not compatible with a CMS or your desired CMS then you will end up acquiring skilled professional or outsourcing the service in order to be able to keep your website up-to-date and do updates, changes and publications on the website. Which is very expensive and could raise your operational cost to a lot. The CMS will allow you to do all those tasks internally, anyone with a little bit of training and basic computer proficiencies can handle a website using a content management system or CMS. It is crucial that the web design you are choosing is not only compatible but allows a certain level of control too through the CMS so you would be able to update all the dynamic parts of the website.

Read More: How to Utilize Expo 2020 for Your Business Growth

Step 6.Check Cost-Effectiveness

Obviously the cost is one of the most important aspect of any project. For a web design there are several factors that can increase its cost. For example if you are going for a customized web design, it will be costly comparing to choosing an existing web design template and customizing it as per you needs. Another most expensive part of a web design is its content, both textual and multimedia (images, videos, animations, etc). Hire a professional content writer and keep only the necessary pages in the website, do not add unnecessary pages, it will increase the cost. If your website is multi-lingual then the cost would be even higher if you will add unnecessary pages in the website. For the images and multimedia do not purchase everything. There are millions of free images and multimedia available on the internet, it takes time to find required images and multimedia from those repositories. Whenever and wherever possible go for free images and multimedia. For the products and services images, it is better to use stock images by vendors or general images, which in most of the cases are free. Hiring a professional photographer or videographer could increase the cost a lot.

A good web design is always programmed in a way that it optimizes the loading speed. Hence high-end or cloud hosting is not needed. The website hosting itself is a very expensive component. If a web design is prepared by professionals and is optimized for the loading speed the hosting requirements are also less. Any medium or small size hosting could also provide good loading speed. But if the design have heavy media files, external resources, older file formats, unorganized resources and such deficiencies the high-end hosting is required which is five to ten times expensive than the normal average hosting. So, the web design also have a huge impact on the initial and operational cost of the website.

Read More: How to Get a Cost-Effective Website for a Small Business

Conclusion

The marketing has adopted to the digital and these days the digital marketing have already dominating the industry. The businesses and organizations in Dubai and all around the UAE are focusing heavily in digital domain. The web design is the most important part of online marketing strategy. A website visitor takes only a fraction of a second to build an impression of the brand in their mind on the bases of the web design. This has a huge impact on the overall customer experience and perception of the brand. The market trends and customer’s needs kept changing all the time, hence the businesses also have a constant need to update their websites. In fact after some time a full revamp of the web design is required to keep up with the market trends. This guide is prepared to let our audience understand about the web design and what is the best way to choose web design in the year 2021. In fact we are anticipating that this guide will remain relevant for a few coming years. We have covered the basics and most fundamental aspects of the web design, if a business or organization follows these steps they can easily choose a right web design for their websites. If you still have any doubt, or if you need help with your web design project feel free to contact us through our Contact Us page or leave a comment in the comment box below and we will get in touch with you soon.

Check out this blog: 5 Signs You need a New Web Design for Your Business Website

The post Best way to Choose Web Design in 2021 appeared first on Web Design Dubai Blog Service.

A business website is the first impression for a large chunk of targeted audience. A user takes merely a fraction of a second to build an impression of the brand by just viewing the web design. This impression biased their entire interaction and it is very hard to change it. As in the website there is no staff or sales person who can talk the visitor into making decision so the content will be your ultimate tool. Together the content and web design will determine the success or failure of a business in online. The online brand image and reputation have huge impact on the business, if a business had a very bad online reputation, most of the prospects will avoid visiting them and vice versa. There are so many different reasons to revamp your web design but here are five most critical signs that you should consider seriously. If any on these signs is there in your website then the web design revamp is absolutely necessary for your business website.

Reason No. 1: The Web Design Doesn’t Properly Reflect Your Brand Identity

A business’s brand identity is not a simple thing, it is a very complex phenomenon. The brand identity keeps evolving, sometimes it is getting minor or unnoticeable changes sometimes a complete revamp, whatever the case is it keep evolving all the time. The website is an online reflection of your brand identity, it should completely reflect the actual brand image. Sometimes the websites are overlooked, and sometimes even the websites doesn’t even reflect the brand remotely. Here are some key points or level where a web design should completely synchronize with the actual brand identity:

Color Scheme

It a very common sight for us witnessing websites who are bearing a completely different color logo and the entire web design is in a different color scheme. That is not advisable. A website theme and the entire web design should completely harmonized with the brand logo and its colors. Usually businesses have two to four different colors in their logo, and mostly only one or two dominates the logo. The website theme and entire web design should also portray those colors. The colors are very important our brain reacts differently to colors, shapes and words, each have its own importance, however the colors are what will draw a picture in the mind of the users. It is a general trend that all major big brands mostly we are using are following a standard color scheme which is to use the logo color in their overall branding. This is what sets a standard and knowingly or unknowingly your website visitors seeks the same in your web design and if they failed to find it, they will going to get a negative impression of the brand.

Design and Graphics

The design is a pretty vague term. It is commonly interchangeable with the entire web design. However, since the brand logo dictates the theme and color scheme the rest of the web design and the graphics should also follow the same. For example if a business have a logo which is having a triangle or circle or any geometric shape, the web design should use those shapes. Although this may not sound important but it is. Human brain reacts very differently to the geometric designs, patterns and shapes than to actual scenes and/or photos. Such similarities between logo and web design makes it more memorable. If your business website lack this you should consider a revamp of your web design.

User Interface

The user interface is what controls the entire user interaction of your customers with the business through the website and throughout the entire customer journey. The user interface should clearly follow the brand identity. Each and every element such as buttons, clicks, mouse hoovers, etc. should clearly reflect the brand identity and doesn’t look different than the rest of the web design. Collectively the web design elements, style and the design interaction forms a user interface. The user interface enables the users to easily navigate through the website information and also take them through the customer journey and allow them to perform different functions easily. If your user interface is not reflecting the brand identity you need to redesign your business website.

Reason No. 2: The Content is Outdated or Failed to Communicate the Right Value Proposition

As the web design only requires a fraction of a second to imprint an impression on visitor’s mind, in order to keep that impression long lasting, the content plays a vital role. A web design without an excellent content is like a Lamborghini without an engine. No matter how cool it looks but it can’t serve the very basic purpose of its existence. Similarly the content is also considered to be the backbone of a web design. The website success relies on a perfect blend of excellent content and captivating web design. A business website acts as a reception or store front in the digital world except there is no sales person or employees to convince your visitors to make a decision and convert. It is the website content that do this work. It has to be up-to-date, correct and simple-to-understand. If your website content have any of the following issue you should seriously consider a web design revamp:

Outdated Content

Any professional marketer knows it very well how important the content is and how important it is to have an up-to-date content and information on your website. People will look up for a business website to get the latest information about the business and its products and services. If that information is outdated, they will not going to convert or even if they convert they will going to have a bad customer experience. Visitors and prospects can easily get the impression that this business is still living in the past and following old trends and business practices. This will result in very bad reputation which not only affect business’s brand identity but it also repels the customers and prospects.

Your Products/Services Evolved

Businesses keep improving their products and services to ensure the highest customer satisfaction. In some cases similar products and services got upgraded or sometimes businesses completely discard an older product or service and replace it with a newer and better one. That has to be updated on the website too. Customers and prospects who are visiting your website must be informed with the new changes that you have made to please them. If your website still have the older products and services you need a revamp to make sure all the information and designs are updated as per the latest products and services.

Lack of Multimedia Content

Today’s modern era is the age of multimedia content. The consumption of the multimedia content is at its peak. Thanks to the easy access to the high speed internet and widespread smartphones. Everyone in Dubai or any other part of UAE have access to the high-speed internet and a smartphone or laptop/desktop. The social media have also changed the marketing trend. People are more comfortable in watching a video or animation rather than reading a paragraph or two. In fact the multimedia content is a crucial part of any modern day marketing or branding strategy. If your web design is not offering enough multimedia content, you need a new web design for your business website.

Reason No. 3:Your Website’s Search Performance is Declining

The website’s sole purpose is to attract visitors, more visitors means more prospects and more prospects means more online leads and conversions which directly impact your business’s profitability and revenue. There are different analytical tools that are used by marketing experts and webmasters to measure the search performance of the website. These tools provide a deeper insight of the website’s search performance. The search engine optimization or SEO plays a vital role in any business website’s success. Usually for any healthy brand around 70% of its website traffic would be organic, means absolutely free. This organic website traffic is the visitors coming to the website through a search engine or a free source. Mainly it is the search engines. The search engines like Google is dominating the search market with whooping 92% of the market share. It is extremely important that your website meets the basic criteria of the search engine and perform well in the search engine. Here are some strong indicators which will indicate if a website needs a complete revamp of its web design:

Bounce Rate is Increasing

The bounce rate is measured as a number of people who have entered a website from one page and then left it without clicking any other page. The bounce rate is a very important indicator of a website’s health. If your bounce rate is increasing that mean your web design and content is failing to meet the needs of your visitors. Most of the time it is web design, in some particular cases it could be the content. Either businesses put all the relevant content in a single page and completely eliminate the need to going to any other page which is very rare, mostly businesses failed to provide relevant information hence the visitors decide not to waste any more time on the website. If that is the case you need a new web design and a content revamp for your business website.

Website Traffic is Decreasing

Sudden decline in website traffic is the nightmare of any marketer. That could be due to a huge change on the website or any serious violation of the search engine rules, mainly it is due to copying content from other websites. However businesses in Dubai and all around the UAE are also reporting us gradual decrease in their website traffic. There could be several reasons for that, but if you haven’t made any change in the website or anything and start witnessing gradual decline in organic traffic that means that your website has become outdated. It happens all the time, these search engines like Google keep updating their algorithms who are responsible of ranking a website. It could be due to an update from the search engine as well. It could be due to competition as well, maybe your competitor(s) have updated their websites and push you down in the search ranks. Whatever the case is, a new and better web design could be very helpful in solving the problem.

Lack Modern SEO Features

What are modern SEO features, well there is no definite answer to that, maybe when I am writing thing blog, I could compile a list and quit possible after a few months or a year when you are reading it that list is already old or outdated. The SEO techniques are also evolving as the other search engine algorithms are, but it is important to have all the modern SEO features on your website for example, if your website lacks the schema, structured data or rich snipped, you should move to a web design which support these features and a bunch of others which will make your business website more visible in the search engines. There are so many different things which are already introduced but not mainstream, maybe after some time these things become mainstream and your competitor adopt them before you, so it is important that your web design support and these modern SEO features with ability to scale in future.

Reason No. 4: The Customer Journey is Difficult

The customer journey in the online or digital world is also the same like in the store or branch or office. The online customer journey includes all the touch points through which a customer can interact and learn about the brand, its products and services and all other relevant information that can influence their decision to convert. That is why it is extremely important that a business websites offer a very fluent and easy customer journey via their business website. If a customer finds it hard to find the required information or the user interface is confusing and complex the customers will leave the website. The website navigation and user interface plays an important role in the customer journey. Sometime businesses have a very long and difficult purchase cycle, sometimes businesses have long content forms, and such things which makes it difficult for an ordinary customer to tread through the customer journey. Here are the most important aspects of customer journey:

Complex User Interface

The user interface by definition is the point where website visitors interact with the website, it is an umbrella term and it includes everything in it. However, mostly the user interface is considered to be the web design elements and their responses on user’s actions. It also includes the information structure or navigation and how the customer will move through the path of the customer journey from acquiring relevant information to converting into a genuine lead. If that entire process is complex and difficult the chances are only a few users will succeed reaching to the end. Mostly a user will quit half way through when they think it is taking too much time or it is complex and or confusing. If that is the case you need an immediate web design revamp for your business website.

Complex Navigation

The website navigation is usually a menu and set of links placed at strategic positions in a web design. As a single homepage can’t contain all of the information, usually the information is scattered across several pages, these pages are called internal pages. The website navigation is like a map to all those internal pages. There are certain things that can make a website navigation complex and hard to understand such as non-standard design/style, generic or confusing labels, too many links in a drop down menu, too many categories and sub-categories, unorganized or wrong order, the visual representation and readability or visibility, etc. Usually the customers and visitors expect a standard navigation style which is a horizontal menu at the top with drop downs and sub-categories, however these days business websites are using so many other styles and customized designs which could be completely new for a large bunch of audience which could make it difficult for them to navigate to their required information. Evaluate your website navigation, take customers feedback on it, and if it is not serving the purpose, you should revamp it, it is always better to provide a completely fresh web design instead of updating a few chunks here and there.

Long Purchase Cycle

The purchase cycle does not always refer to an online purchase but this term is used very vaguely. It usually refers to conversion. Some businesses do offer online purchases which require the customers to either register and have an online account or fill in long forms and then they are been asked to fill in bank details, and a bunch of other details. Similarly if you just want your customers to contact you from your website you must have been putting a contact form, or if you want them to subscribe there would be a subscription form, whatever the case is the customer takes everything differently, they might happily go through three or four steps to make an online purchase but they will not going to do the same for just contacting a company. Businesses often try to take as much information as they can which is not good, the user usually want to do it as quickly as possible, and too much form inputs will repel them.

Reason No. 5: Your Website Lacks Modern Features

There was a time when business in Dubai and all around the UAE were treating their business website as an online brochure or company profile. The normal market practice was to sell and purchase a website as a product. Businesses buy a website and left it for year, and that was also the same pretty much everywhere in the world. But things have changed drastically, now a days a website have become a full-on communication tool, rather being treated as a product now a days it is considered to be a service. Business in Dubai and all over UAE are either maintaining internal IT department to manage their websites or either outsourcing them. Whatever the case is a business website remains subjected to a continuous change and evolution. Here are some important traits of a modern day business website and if your web design doesn’t have them you need a completely new web design for your business website:

Poor Mobile Experience

In Dubai and all around the UAE the smartphone and mobile is used by almost 94% of the population. The mobile internet searches all over the world including UAE have already surpassed the conventional computers and laptops. Which makes the smartphone and mobile experience a most important part of online strategy. Businesses often overlooked their mobile experience, some even don’t offer a mobile friendly or responsive web design. Whenever a website is opened form a mobile device which is not optimized for the smartphones, the users immediately left. If you website is not mobile friendly or have a responsive web design or even if your responsive web design is not offering an optimum user journey, you should immediately revamp the web design of your business website.

Out-dated Functionalities

Each year comes with a slightly different trends, which compel the web designing agencies and businesses to innovate new features and techniques to deliver a captivating website which not only engage the customers but also provide them convenience and comfort in performing their tasks. This requires intensive features and technological integration with other online platforms. If a website lacks those modern features the users will get a very negative impression. For example social media integration and sharing functionality is very common, the WhatsApp or live chat functionality is also very popular, a modern day business website should offer such latest features else the customers will perceive the entire brand as outdated or old.

Slow Loading Time

The loading time of a website is the most crucial aspect of customer experience and it also have a huge contribution in search engine rankings. If a websites take more than three to five seconds to load the chances are almost 70% of the users will quit it and whoever will remember it will never click on it again from the search page. The slow loading web pages can have a very destructive consequences. If a website is loading slowly, a business should immediately check the two things, one is their website hosting and the other is the web design. Mostly it is the web design which is not properly programmed or optimized for better loading speed. Remember a slow loading website is even slower on smartphone and mobile devices. If that is the case, a business website needs a new web design.

Conclusion

The digital communication has become a necessity for modern day marketing. Business in Dubai and all over the UAE are well aware of the importance of their business website and the power of digital and online presence. The websites have evolved from an online brochure to a full-fledged communication channel. In fact a multitude of industries are heavily relying on their online strategies, the e-commerce business is totally dependent on the website. The websites and the relevant technology is rapidly evolving, there has been too many developments in the website designing and development technologies too. It is extremely important that a business website completely follow the modern trends and standards. The user experience and customer journey at the website can have a huge impact on the overall brand identity and brand reputation. The websites provide a business a chance to reach out to unexplored markets and to compete with large competitors in the online sphere.

Business in Dubai and all around the UAE often thinks that if they have a website that will be enough but that isn’t. The businesses must have to keep updating and upgrading their website, its web design, content, features and everything in between. The reason of this blog was to let our audience understand when they should seriously think about revamping the web design and its contents. RSI Concepts is a leading name in web design Dubai, if you want to learn more or want us to help you improving your website and online brand identity feel free to let us know. You can contact us through our Contact Us page or leave a comment in the comment box below and we will get in touch with you soon.

Check out this blog: How to Get a Cost-Effective Website for a Small Business

The post 5 Signs You need a New Web Design for Your Business Website appeared first on Web Design Dubai Blog Service.

See More: 5 Latest Trends of Websites in Dubai

Here are 5 Impacts of the touch screen devices on web design:

1. Web Design’s Layout and Presentation

The web design behaves differently on different touch screen sizes, we usually called refer to this phenomenon as “responsive web design”. Responsive web designs are programmed in a way that they can sense the screen size and device from which they are being accessed. Then the responsive web design automatically renders their design elements and information in a fashion which is most appropriate for that particular screen size. This all is to ensure the finest user experience and all this happens within a fraction of a second and a human being cannot even notice this all. The overall web design layout is made up of different design elements, for example, the images, photos, text, headings, boxes, buttons, navigation and such things, which present the information in a useful manner for the users.

When a responsive web design is opened at different screen sizes it behaves differently, the objective here is to maintain an almost similar user experience on different screen sizes, for example, if you are accessing a website from a 14 Inch laptop screen you know the purchase button is located on the lower right corner of the product description. So when you are opening this website from your mobile phone which has a 5.5-inch screen you will surely go to expect that button just below the description, this is how the human brain works. And this is what a responsive design should do. Although the overall presentation of the information is changed still are able to meet the expectations of your visitor, this is how the responsive web designs are programmed.

See More: Importance of Web Design in 2021 in Dubai, UAE

2. Web Design Navigation Structure

The navigation structure is very important for any web design. The navigation structure is all the information are presented and provided on the website. Most of the time all the important things are placed in different places, for example in the first landing screen is the first visual interaction of a user, it mainly consists of an image slider with multiple important products or services along with appealing sales pitches. The second landing screen is when a user scrolls down and view the next section of the web design, it mostly contains more products/services or sales pitches or a short introduction of the business. Then there are more until the bottom or footer of the web design. On top of the web design, there is always a menu, which provides links to the internal pages and more information. This is how a full navigational structure of a web design is built.

When we open a website on a smartphone or smaller device, the menu cannot be displayed in its entirety as we can display it on the desktop or laptop computer screens that are bigger. So, in order to provide the menu most of the responsive designs display a button or icon of the menu, when a user tap on that menu the menu appears in vertical or nested or tree shape to let the user navigate through all of the information from the internal pages. This is how the navigation is reshaped for the touch screens. Now the most important thing here to consider is that the user might be touching the screen with a finger or thumb, so the size of the buttons and the size of the menu items should be enough to compensate for the effect of tapping with a large thumb of a finger. If the buttons are too small or the menu items are too many and have to be small to be displayed in a single screen view, then the user might accidentally tap on the wrong item/button. This will be very annoying and the user might not consider going any further if they are unable to easily tap the item/button they wanted to.

See More: 5 Facts of Productive Web Designs – Dubai, UAE

3. Hover Effects, Touch Sensitivity and Invisible Content

One of the biggest disadvantages of touchscreens is that they do not support hover effects. So, if your web design is heavily relying on hover effects and the information especially the navigations and menus are designed for the hovering effect, then immediately fix them. This could lead to a lot of problems when a user is viewing your website from a smartphone or any other touch device. Another problem with the touch devices is that there is a latency in some touchscreens, mostly it is 300ms which although doesn’t look much but when special effects are used on your web designs this factor could cause issues in the touch screen user experience. There are certain devices that support 3D Touch or a multi-dimensional touch which basically work differently on different levels of pressure, but these devices are very rare and the website development technologies don’t have enough support for these too. Such features are usually designed for smartphone applications rather than web browsers.

A huge concern related to user experience is the invisible content, like smartphones and most of the other touch screen devices are smaller than the usual computers and laptops this is why the web designs are programmed to hide certain aspects of the designs, graphic elements, and sometimes information too. Which could ruin your user experience. Most of the times the web designers program a responsive web design to hide the sidebars or widgets in the side column of the web design which is very bad for the user experience. The users and customers always expect the same navigations, structure, behaviour and information of a website on the smartphone and tablets as well as they are on the desktop and laptops. So, all the content and information available on a normal desktop or laptop version of the web design should also be provided in the smartphone or touch screen version too.

See More: Limitations in web designs for E-Commerce websites

4. Compatibility and Load Time

Compatibility and load time are very important not only for the users but for digital marketing too especially for search engine optimization (SEO). These days the modern web designs heavily rely on design elements, rich graphics and multimedia content rather than textual content so the compatibility and load time could be a nightmare for the web designer and web developers. Nowadays, touch screens are not only smartphones and tablets, but laptops are also adopting the technology and smart screens are dominating the TV industry. You don’t know if your user is coming from a smartphone, tablet, smart TV or smart media box (almost all smart media box/player support web browsing). All those touch screens enabled devices are built on different technologies, with different application priorities and also with different computing powers.

This rise the importance of compatibility and load time. Smartphones and smart devices are comparatively weak in computing power compared to a regular desktop or laptop computer. Which could cause a longer load time on such devices. Sometimes the load time of modern web designs could be so long that a user quit on it and skip the website. This could be disastrous. Another important thing to consider is the compatibility as all touch screen enabled devices are built on different hardware and software technologies, their compatibility and behaviour towards different web design technologies are different. For example, the iPhones and iPads are running on iOS and most iOS users prefer the Safari web browser. Similarly, the Android Smartphone and Tablets are running on Android OS and most Android users prefer Google Chrome and Firefox browsers.

See More: 5 Different Phases of Web Design and Development Project

All the browsers such as Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Safari and Others are built of different technologies and all the platforms or operating systems such as Android, iOS, Windows, Linux and others are also built on different technologies. For example, the Safari browser may behave differently on Windows than on iOS or MAC. The same applies to all other browsers. This causes a huge difference when it comes to user experience and how your web design, its content and its response will be on different browsers and on different platforms. So, a web design must have to be able to deal with all those technological differences to ensure the maximum user experience.

5. User Interaction with Mobile First and Desktop First Web Design

The user interaction with Desktop First or Mobile Fist web design is a very long debate among the web designing community. Most of the time the web designers carefully analyze the audience and estimate the web traffic source either it will be the desktop or laptop devices or smartphones and then make a decision. Which was somehow correct in the past but not anymore. Nowadays, the preferences of the people are changed. People are spending more time on mobiles than on computers. Still taking a decision between desktop-first web design approach and mobile-first web design approach could be tricky. As per my experience in the industry nowadays the mobile-first web designs are performing better than the desktop first web designs. As most of the users are spending more time browsing and surfing on smartphone devices so they are more familiar with the smartphone versions of websites and smartphone applications that carry a certain theme and design style. If your website is mobile friendly and is designed with the preference of mobile devices and touch screens in mind then the chances are they will also perform well on the desktop and laptop as well.

However, there is a huge difference between the desktop first web design approach and the mobile-first web design approach. The desktop websites are designed on a pre-defined structure which is 2 column or 3 columns or 4 column design. Whereas the mobile-first web designs are built on a modular structure, mostly box type design. The design is made up of different sizes of boxes, sometimes the boxes are visible and distinguishable and sometimes they are not. These boxes will allow the web designer to easily program them to fit and align according to the mobile touch screens, the buttons are also designed bigger to support touch screens and the key functions are placed on certain places which are easy to tap from the smartphones. The page scrolling can also be configured to enhance the mobile user experience. Most of the graphics and effects are achieved through CSS/programming to ensure quick load time on mobile devices. This is the major difference between the desktop first web design approach and the mobile-first web design approach.

See More: What kind of Web Design Compels Customers to Click Call to Action?

Conclusion

The touch screens are heavily impacting the web design trends and the user’s expectations. It is very crucial for the success of a web design that it maintains a similar user experience in any version of the website whether it is accessed from a desktop/laptop or smartphone or tablet the users should be able to easily identify and reach the important information and navigation. The load time and other programming limitations that are present in the touch screen enabled devices should also be considered and accounted for while designing a website. As we know that in general people are spending more time searching and surfing the internet from touch screen enabled devices so our web design must have to design to provide the ultimate user experience there. When we are designing the information and navigational structure of a web page for the touch screens, we can easily map it on the non-touch devices such as laptop and desktops, but if our design approach is desktop first, it could get harder to maintain a similar user experience on the touch screen enabled devices.

At RSI Concepts we have vast experience in web designing and development, our clientele expands from small local business websites to huge corporate sites and everything in between. If you need a business website, or corporate website or eCommerce or an online marketplace, feel free to reach us out using the below comment box or contact us through our Contact Us page.

Check out this: 6 Step guide to choose a web design firm in UAE

The post 5 Impacts of Touch Screen Devices on Web Design appeared first on Web Design Dubai Blog Service.

1. Dynamic Websites VS Static Websites

There are two major types of websites, static websites and dynamic websites. A few years back there was a third type which was the mobile site or a completely separate mobile version of the website, this trend is now being replaced with responsive websites. The two major classifications of the websites are as follow:

Static Website

A static website is developed on a basic front-end design. The major difference is in order to update the website content or data a professional website developer is required. As it can only be done by changing the source code of the web pages. In the light of modern trends and the website’s function in marketing and communication, the businesses will have to update their websites and some web pages on regular basis. Each time when an update is required a professional website programmer is acquired to do so. As the website is built using HTML and CSS components, which both are purely source codes, so only a professional website programmer can update the website content and data. In that case, the businesses will have to hire a full-time website programmer or a service provider to maintain the website content updates and changes such as blogs, news, press releases, etc.

Dynamic Website

A dynamic website is developed in two major section one is a frontend which is almost a static website and the other section is a control panel or content management system. The main difference between a dynamic and static website is that the businesses don’t require a full-time professional website developer to do the updates on the website. The CMS or the content management system is a powerful software tool with an interactive admin control panel dashboard that allows ordinary people to do the updates on the website and also enable them to create new pages such as news, blogs, press releases, product pages and services pages. The frontend of the website is also made using HTML and CSS however the backend or the admin control panel is made using PHP, ASP, and Database tools.

What is a Content Management System or CMS?

A content management system or CMS as clear from its name allows managing the content of the corresponding application/frontend of a website. Although it is used for various other applications too the major application is websites. There are tons of content management system available in the market, some are open-source, some are propriety tools, some are general purpose and some are for specific applications. The businesses will have to choose the content management system or CMS wisely which could fulfil their needs.

2. Responsive Websites

The responsive website trend has gained huge popularity not only in Dubai but all over the world. These days, almost 99% of the enquiries are coming for a responsive website. As the name itself is self-explanatory, the responsive websites are those who respond to the screen size, operating system, web browser and the device from where the website is opened. The main objective of a responsive website is to maintain a similar user experience and user journey on all devices and platforms regardless of any dependency on the screen size, browser, or platform. This is achieved through the latest website programming techniques and tools. A responsive website can automatically sense the device and other details in just a fraction of a second and render its design elements, content, fonts, photos, videos and everything else as per the screen size and the platform it is being opened from. This provides a great advantage to maintain the brand identity, user experience and user journey which resultantly contributes to more sales and online leads.

3. Multimedia Content

These days another popular trend is using multimedia and graphic-rich content on the website. As in Dubai, everyone has access to broadband, 4G and even 5G also, in fact, Dubai was one of the earliest adopters of the 5G technology. So, using multimedia content is not an issue at all. These days most websites are using very attractive videos, micro animations, rich graphics elements and multimedia content to provide a good user experience. Here are a few examples of trendy multimedia elements:

Full-Screen Video

Using a full-screen video could increase customer interest in your products and services. It is human nature that our brand responds more to a moving object and moving picture than a static picture. So, the video will automatically increase the customer engagement level. You can include a lot many things in a few seconds of video which if described in words could take up to 500 words. So having an attractive video could really make a difference in your online conversion rates.

Full-Screen Image Sliders

Full-screen image sliders are also gaining popularity, you can use multiple images in an automatically rotating slider. Like I said moving objects tend to interest the human brain more than a simple static image. Another advantage of the image slider will be to be able to present multiple sales pitches in one screen area. You can further improve the user interest by adding taglines and slogans or a short description or maybe a sub-heading. Whatever you use, a full-screen image slider is far better than a small tiny image slider or image at the landing screen.

Micro Animations

Micro Animations are also gaining popularity, you can use micro animations in your image slider, in different widgets and areas of your website. The micro animations are also used to increase customer engagement. You can also utilize a single area or space to accommodate two or three taglines or sales pitches.

The multimedia content really helps to improve the user experience and use journey on your website and also help to improve your online conversions. There are so many possibilities of using the above-mentioned multimedia content or any other content on the website to increase customer engagements on the website.

4. Interactive Websites

Interactive websites are a slightly new phenomenon in Dubai, and it getting excellent response from the users. Interactive web designs are the designs that interact with the users, respond to their movements and provide a great user experience. There are several ways to improve the user experience, for example, whenever the user is moving their mouse cursor the design elements responds or at least show some kind of movements. This keeps the customer interested as they will expect to experience more such movements or responses in the website. This way the users will access more internal pages and spend more time staying on your website, either way, it is very helpful in improving the user experience at the website.

5. Thumb-Friendly Websites

Although sometimes people consider thumb-friendly as mobile-first web designs. But both are two different things. Mobile-first designs are for those businesses that are getting most of their online conversions from mobile devices. Especially the eCommerce websites, they are heavily relying on mobile traffic so they can improve their online conversion by implementing a mobile-first web design to their website. However, thumb-friendly websites are one-fit-for-all. No matter what you do, you should have thumb-friendly navigation. As in Dubai, almost everyone has a smartphone with internet access. People spent a lot of time on their mobile devices, just think about yourself or check your friends, family and colleagues, you will surely notice people tend to spend more time on their mobile devices than on regular computers. This is why smartphones are a very important aspect that each and every marketer needs to address.

These days almost 99% of our website design and development enquirer asked for a responsive website. This means everyone knows the importance of smartphone compatible websites. But most of the time our customers do not understand the importance of navigation. The navigation, menu and buttons of your websites which will navigate your customers through the various pages of the website and also take them through their user journey on your website are extremely important. So no matter how cool your website looks on smartphones if its navigation is hard to access on the smartphones, it could significantly decrease your online conversions.

Conclusion

In Dubai, almost everyone has access to the computer, internet and smartphone. The websites have a great impact and influence on purchasing decisions. No matter what a customer is looking for they will first try to look it up on Google. Even if by any promotion or marketing method you have reached your customer with a product, service or solution there is almost the probability of 90% that the prospect will try to look it up on the internet. This is when you have to be very vigilant, attentive and attractive too. Your website’s design, functions, content and everything in between will heavily impact the decision of the purchaser.

Make sure your website is dynamic and you can easily update it any time you want without any additional cost or any additional technical speciality. Your website should be able to maintain the same user experience and user journey across all devices and platforms. Multimedia content could really help you out in gaining more attention from the visitors. Interactive websites can easily gain popularity and produce better results than any traditional website. As most of the users tend to do online searches from their mobile devices so make sure your website is offering an excellent smartphone experience.

It is always wise to consult a professional. RSI Concepts is a leading web design and development agency in Dubai, having more than a decade long experience and serving hundreds of clients all across the GCC. Feel free to get in touch with us if you want to redesign your website or need any consultation. You can reach us out via the comment box below or you can approach us from our Contact Us page.

Check this out: Importance of Web Design in 2021 in Dubai

The post 5 Latest Trends of Websites in Dubai appeared first on Web Design Dubai Blog Service.

In order to address the topic we first have to understand what is online lead or business generation and why is it important? What is the role of a website in the online business generation and lead generation?

What is an online lead or business generation?

What is an online lead or business generation? The simplest answer is to get prospects and leads from online channels, mainly the website. You can target different audiences by different digital mediums and drive them all to your website or landing page and then they will either click on the CTA (call to action) or make a purchase or do whatever you wanted them to do. This is called the lead or business generation from the website.

There are certain businesses and organizations who partially or fully rely on a business structure that require them to do transactions through their websites, such as e-commerce (Amazon, Noon, etc). But there are other businesses who do not fully rely on online mediums and websites such as real estate industry, although these days they are focusing on the website and digital mediums a lot but still, they are driving sales through so many other channels. So, all such scenarios and everything in between which somehow involves online channels and websites to generate leads, sales and businesses are called online lead or business generation.

Why Online Leads are Important?

It depends on the nature of your business, but the current consumer market is heavily relying on online mediums such as websites and social media, etc. The B2B industry is also leaning towards digital mediums and focusing particularly on the websites which are designed to generate business. So, online leads or generating business through websites is very important for almost all sort of businesses, organizations and industries. These days in UAE, everyone holds a smartphone with internet access and the common trend of the buyers is searching online first before making any purchase of any sort of product or service. Which makes the online lead generation even more important if you want to grow or even want to stay in the market.

What is the role of a website in the online business generation and lead generation?

What is the role of a website in the online business generation or lead generation? This is a pretty straight forward and simple question, but most of the time the businesses are reluctant to ask it and even more resistive to understand it. As Dubai particularly and all around the UAE the technology and innovation is widely accepted and adopted conveniently than in any other part of the world, so the market evolves rapidly. The decision-makers at businesses sometimes failed to keep up with the pace of the market. Which is why they failed to realize the importance and role of a website in business generation and lead generation. Here are some of the key points a website can achieve to expand, grow and sustain a business in the UAE:

1. Website is your online brand identity or your front office for millions of people
2. Your corporate website can help you target specific audiences to generate more business and leads
3. The presentation and appearance does matter, and the website can be your first impression to a large untouched audience and it can easily reach to the extended markets
4. A website can be transformed into a powerful marketing tool to generate business and leads at a very low cost by providing instant results and a consistent source of leads
5. Rather than serving the purpose of a company’s online corporate profile, a website can effectively work as a modern communication tool for your existing customers too
6. Mobile experience and facility to integrate so many enterprise tools and portals, the website can not only generate new business and leads but it can also help to sustain your existing customers by proving them a lot many facilities and services

This is how a website can transform a business or organization. Another example of the effectiveness and power of a website is the e-commerce sector which purely relies on generating business through their websites and the current stats suggest the industry have reached to billions of dollars all over the world and in some cases, the e-commerce even surpasses the traditional retail chains who were previously known as the Mughals of the retail sector.

Now the question is if all websites designed to generate business or not?

Well, the simple answer is no. But that will not go to justify the question at all, so we have to elaborate it. As almost all businesses can take advantage of having a website that can generate business and leads for them. There are still a few industries and businesses that still can do well even without having a business or lead oriented website. But they are very few. And all of such businesses or organizations are working only on a B2B business structure and doesn’t require any consumer base interaction. So the website for such kind of organizations and corporations are not designed to generate online queries and leads.

For example, huge oil and gas distribution and management companies, don’t require to market their products or services on their websites as they are targeting an entirely different audience. Usually, that kind of businesses is relying on having conferences, corporate events, for the very elite of the management of the selected clientele and targeted markets to represent their products and services. So, they do not require to provide all the information about their products and services on their website and neither do they require to have someone fill in a contact form or a callback request. A simple corporate profile, detailed portfolio and branch listing could suffice.

Conclusion

Are all websites designed to generate business? Well, most of the time the answer is yes, but for a very few, let say 1% of the time the websites are not meant to generate business or leads rather be an aid to close a lead or just to provide sufficient information about the business, its services, products and portfolio. But for 99% of the times, the websites can be a very effective business generation tool. Especially if you are in a B2C market, you must have an appealing website to generate online leads and business from the digital mediums. If you are a small business or a medium-size enterprise no matter you are in a B2C or B2B type of market, you should have a very catchy and effective website to generate online leads and business in order to compete with competitors. So, the conclusion is ‘yes’ almost 99% of the times a business can utilize their website to generate business and leads.

Was that article helpful? Do you still have any question? Feel free to contact us through the comment box below.

The post Are all websites designed to generate business? appeared first on Web Design Dubai Blog Service.

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.

The post 10 Tips to Design a Website in UAE Market appeared first on Web Design Dubai Blog Service.

Experience of the company – This can be easily measured by checking on things like – number of years in the industry, number of quality clients, also, their web design portfolio. Years of experience in business are an indication that the company is successful and high on stability and thus you can completely rely on them for your project on a long term basis. Good number of clients is a sign that the company is familiar name and has a wide spectrum in terms of projects making it easier for them to understand the complexities of different types of projects.

Often, to save a little time and money people end up turning to small companies and freelancers which looks like a tempting affair in the short run but can be really damaging in the long run due to the lack of experience and expertise. One has to understand that a website is an ongoing project and it is important to partner with an experienced and a reliable company for ongoing support and assistance.

How much to pay? – “You get what you pay for” well, this saying is somewhat true for the web designing industry. The price is dependent on the kind and number of functionalities that you need, but if you have budget constraints then instead of getting it done all at once through a small agency, you should go slow with it for the time being and then can go on adding features as per the requirements.

Updating the content – Regardless of the need to update, make sure you have all the access to the CMS to update and edit the content yourself rather than hiring someone else to do that for you.

Ongoing Support – You might need their help with emails, CMS, hosting, domain etc. So, look for a company who is willing to provide an ongoing support for the same.

Some other things to look for – Apart from the listed ones you should also check on things like:

– Are there any hidden charges?
– Are they showing you genuine samples?
– Loading time of the website on your sever

We hope that these tips will be helpful for you to choose the best web design company for you.

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