Assessing Your Website Design During the COVID-19 Downtime

Experiencing downtime due to COVID-19? Many of us are. You can use this time to reassess your website and make plans for updates.

What should you look for? Here are some key elements of a robust website design, along with questions to ask yourself as you take a critical look at your website.

Strategy

A functional design is supported by a clear strategy. Your site may be aesthetically pleasing, but it must meet the needs of your customers and your business to be successful. Ask yourself:

• Do new visitors get a clear sense of your business and what you offer when they land on your site?
• Does your site direct visitors to do what you want them to do?
• Do you have a clear strategy that informs the design?

If not, you need to update it. Use this checklist to help you:

• What category is my business, and is that made clear on my website?
• What is the purpose of this website, and is the design accomplishing it?
• Who is my target audience?
• What do I want my audience to do, and is the design encouraging that action?

Once you answer these questions, define your brand and set specific website objectives. Adjust the design accordingly. When your website is informed by clear strategy, it’s much more likely to succeed.

Functionality

Functionality encompasses the practical considerations of what goes into good website design, such as speed, user-friendliness, security, technical details like sitemaps, etc. Functionality can be a make-or-break issue for websites that work. If a visitor can’t find what he or she is looking for because of poor navigation, you will lose your potential customer. If pages load slowly, both visitors and search engines notice and will respond negatively.

• How long does it take my pages to load, and will visitors get bored waiting?
• How easy is it to find information?
• Is there a search button for visitors?
• Do all the links work?
• Is the site mobile responsive?
• Is customer information secure?

Consider all the ways to make your site as functional as possible. Imagine coming to it as a visitor and trying to find info. What’s more, go the extra mile in terms of security and always protect customers’ personal data.

Aesthetics

Style may be relative. Still, there are clear aesthetic principles to guide your website design. The best designs will align with their brands, create positive impressions for visitors, be clean, and complement the content they’re communicating.

• Does my website’s style align with my brand in terms of colors, feel, graphics, etc?
• Is the style consistent throughout the website?
• Will the style suit my target audience?
• What feel does the website give—Orderly or messy? Sparse or crowded? Playful or formal?—and how does that align with my goals?

Eliminate excess design choices that contradict your brand message. Make sure your logo and website design align. Consider your target audience and let that inform your style.

SEO

There are many ways that the design of your website impacts search optimization. Does your website have a lot of graphics, for example? If so, search engines can’t see them. You need to add ALT tags to your image descriptions in order for search engines to know what you’re showing. Is your HTML efficient? If not, it could hurt your search rankings.

• Are all my images optimized with ALT tags?
• Is my coding efficient, or are there extraneous lines that could be eliminated?
• Have I used relevant keywords in title tags, meta descriptions, heading tags, etc.?
• Do I have a sitemap?

Don’t make the mistake of thinking search engine optimization and website design are separate matters. Consider the ways your design will affect its search rankings, and make adjustments accordingly.