How do your customers find you? Chances are, their first port of call will be your website. This gives you the perfect opportunity to connect with your customers by designing a website they will enjoy. Here are five simple tips to help you on your way.

1. Make it Central to your Branding Strategy

Take a look at these two sites: Vogue and TeenVogue. You’ll see immediately that they have been branded differently to appeal to two distinct groups of customer. It’s important to design your site to attract your target audience, but there are a few basic principles to follow when it comes to the overall organisation and appearance of your website.

Start with your logo: It should be given a prominent position and appear in the same header spot on all your pages. A high resolution image that links to your homepage will help customers get to know your logo and easily navigate your site.

Next, pay attention to the colour scheme and font choice as these will set the tone and character of your website. Consistency is the key. Customers will get to know you through your branding, so once you have a found a style that works, make sure you stick to it for all your web pages.

2. Include the Essentials

This is a really simple thing to get right, but it is so often overlooked. Compile a list all the things you want your customers to find easily from your website: for example your contact details, opening times and how to place an order. Ask around your employees and customers to find out what they think – you might be surprised by what they consider to be must-haves on your site. Make your navigation and links prominent and intuitive. If visitors to your website feel at ease and in control, you can be confident that your website is working for you to establish customer trust and brand loyalty.

3. Use Quality Content

Just as blinking images and visual overload can make users click away, so too can being faced with a solid wall of badly organised text. Focus on the information that you want your target audience to absorb and consider how the text appears on the screen – is it visually inviting? Adding fresh content to your site can be a great way to keep visitors returning, but make sure you keep eye-strain to a minimum.

4. Cut out the Clutter

Bells and whistles are out, sleek elegance and simplicity is in. The demise of Adobe Flash, aided along by the Occupy Flash movement, has helped turn the tide against excessive visual bling. So, give your content breathing space, and keep to a standard layout.

and finally…

5. Make it Responsive

This tip might seem not-so-simple, but the ever accelerating trend towards mobile technology means that your website must seamlessly adapt to any device and any screen size. The way forward is to build your site using Responsive Web Design (RWD). If you feel that building your own site is beyond your capability, get help from the experts: Invest in a professional web designer.