As a website owner, you’ve probably spent a lot of time and resources developing your website and trying to ensure its success. However, increasing your website traffic through search engine optimisation or paid ads isn’t always enough to increase your revenue – a successful website encourages as many users as possible to carry out desired actions rather than just clicking on the home page and leaving.

Website Conversion Defined 

Website conversion is a key measure of how well your site turns visits into tangible results, whether that’s sales, leads, or any other action important to your business. Essentially, it’s about how effectively your site encourages visitors to do what you want them to do. This could mean anything from clicking a button to completing a purchase. Conversions are crucial because they’re a clear sign your site is not just attracting visitors, but also engaging them enough to take the next step in becoming customers or active members of your community.

Examples Of Websites Conversion

Some examples of successful conversions might be:

• Making a purchase
• Creating an account
• Booking an appointment
• Signing up for a newsletter
• Clicking the ‘contact’ button

 What Counts As A Conversion For Your Business?

Choosing the right action to measure for determining your website’s conversion rate depends on your business goals and what you consider a successful interaction with your site. Here are some steps to guide you:

• Identify Your Business Objectives: Start by defining what success looks like for your website. Is it selling products, generating leads, or perhaps increasing sign-ups for a newsletter?
• Understand Your Audience’s Journey: Consider the path you expect users to take on your website. Which actions are critical steps in this journey?
• Align with Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): Choose an action that aligns with your business’s KPIs. For an eCommerce site, this might be a sale, while for a B2B company, it could be a form submission or a download.
• Assess the Value of Different Actions: Not all actions contribute equally to your business objectives. Evaluate which actions lead to the most value, such as a direct purchase versus a newsletter sign-up.
• Consider the User Experience: Choose an action that is easily trackable and represents a clear intention or interest from the user. This could be as simple as clicking a ‘Contact Us’ button or as significant as completing a purchase.
• Review and Adapt: Your chosen action isn’t set in stone. Regularly review if this action still aligns with your business goals and adjust if needed, especially as your website and business evolve.

By selecting an action that closely aligns with your business objectives and customer journey, you can effectively measure and optimise your website’s conversion rate, ensuring it accurately reflects your site’s success in achieving your business goals.

How To Measure Your Website Conversion Rate

Tools like Google Analytics are indispensable when it comes to measuring your website’s conversion rate. They provide a comprehensive view of your website’s performance and key metrics by tracking user behaviour, traffic sources, and more. You can set up conversion goals in Google Analytics to track specific actions, like form submissions or product purchases. Additionally, consider using tools like Hotjar for visual insights like heatmaps, which can give you a deeper understanding of how visitors interact with your site. These tools, when combined, give you a well-rounded picture of your website’s effectiveness in converting visitors and can highlight areas that need improvement.

Calculating Your Website Conversion Rate

Calculating your conversion rate is a straightforward enough process, as well as being a vital Key Performance Indicator (KPI) to make sure you’re achieving your goals. To calculate the rate, divide the number of conversions by the total number of visitors to your website over the same period, and then multiply the result by 100 to get a percentage. For instance, if your site had 200 conversions from 5,000 visitors last month, your conversion rate would be (200/5000) * 100, equating to 4%.

Regularly tracking this metric allows you to understand how well your website engages visitors and prompts them to take action, providing a clear indicator of your site’s performance and areas that may need improvement.

What’s A Good Website Conversion Rate?

Understanding the average conversion rate for websites can be a helpful benchmark, but it’s important to remember that this rate highly depends on your industry and the specific conversion goal you’re aiming for. Generally, the average conversion rate varies widely across different industries, with some sectors seeing higher rates due to the nature of their business and target audience. You can also expect to see seasonal dips and peaks in your conversion rate.

A good conversion rate is often considered to be around 2-5%, but this can differ significantly. For instance, eCommerce sites might have different expectations compared to service-oriented B2B websites. A 2% conversion rate might be considered a high conversion rate for some businesses. It’s important to measure your industry standards and set realistic goals based on your industry averages to truly gauge how effective your website is at converting potential customers or clients. 

What Is Conversion Rate Optimisation 

Website Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) is the process of increasing the percentage of website visitors who complete a desired action on your website. It involves understanding how users interact with your site and adjusting elements to encourage more of them to take specific actions, like buying a product or service.

In the context of eCommerce, conversion rates are a vital metric that indicates how effective your website is in convincing visitors to make a transaction. By using CRO, businesses can more easily meet their website goals, whether it’s increasing sales, generating leads, or driving other forms of engagement. It’s about optimising the user experience to convert a higher proportion of the total number of website visitors into customers, thereby boosting overall business performance.

How To Increase Your Website Conversion Rate

If your website has a low conversion rate, don’t get discouraged – it doesn’t necessarily indicate failure. Instead, it’s an opportunity for you to optimise your website and adjust your strategy. Fortunately, there are some pretty steps you can take to increase your conversion rate – mostly centred around improving your overall website experience and following best practices when it comes to website design and website performance.  Here are 9 of the most fundamental steps to improving your conversion rate: 

• Identify friction points
• Ensure your Website is responsive
• Implement website personalisation
• Highlight your value proposition
• Simplify navigation 
• Add clear calls-to-action
• Streamline the checkout process
• Optimise web page speed
• Use trust signals

Identify Friction Points 

To boost your website’s conversion rate, start by pinpointing any friction points. These are areas of your website where users might be getting stuck or losing interest. Heatmaps are a great tool for this. They show where users are clicking and how they’re scrolling through your site through mouse tracking. By studying these patterns, you can find out where visitors might be dropping off or facing hurdles, like complicated navigation or unclear calls to action. Addressing these friction points makes for a smoother, more inviting user experience, encouraging more visitors to take the actions you want.

Ensure Your Website Is Responsive

As of December 2023, over 55% of website traffic comes from mobile devices, meaning responsive web design is imperative. Your website needs to look and work great, even on mobile devices. Websites that aren’t mobile-friendly can frustrate mobile users and push them away, harming your conversion rate.

A responsive design automatically adjusts to fit the screen it’s being viewed on, making your site accessible and user-friendly no matter how people access it. In 2024, most users expect a fully responsive design on mobile websites, and this is especially true for business websites. If you’d like to learn more, check out our article ‘What Is Responsive Design?‘.

Implement Website Personalisation 

Adding a personal touch to your website can significantly enhance the user experience and, in turn, your conversion rate. Personalisation could be as simple as showing relevant product recommendations based on browsing history or as complex as customised landing pages for different user segments. Tailoring the user experience to meet individual needs or interests makes your site more engaging and can encourage visitors to take the next step.

Highlight Your Value Proposition 

Your website should clearly communicate your value proposition through compelling website copy- what sets you apart from the competition and why visitors should choose you. This should be prominent on your site, ideally on the homepage and any landing pages. A strong, clear value proposition can resonate with your audience, giving them more reason to engage further with your site. Our guide to Creating A Marketing Strategy can help you get a clear idea of your unique value proposition.

Simplify Navigation

Lastly, don’t underestimate the power of simple, intuitive navigation. Your website’s layout should make it easy for visitors to find what they’re looking for without getting lost or overwhelmed. Streamlined navigation helps guide visitors smoothly through your site, leading them towards taking the desired action, whether it’s making a purchase, signing up for a service, or getting in touch. Making critical actions easier for people to find is one of the most fundamental ways to improve conversion rates.

Clear Calls To Action

Your website copy should have CTAs that are easy to spot and understand. They guide visitors on what to do next, whether it’s making a purchase, signing up for a service, or getting in touch. A good CTA can significantly influence a visitor’s decision to take action, meaning better results for your business. 

Streamline the Checkout Process

For online stores, the checkout process should be as smooth as possible. Minimising the number of steps to complete a purchase can lead to fewer abandoned carts and more completed transactions, increasing conversion.

Optimising Web Page Load Speed

A fast-loading website is crucial for keeping visitors engaged. By optimising elements like images and server response time, you can prevent potential customers from leaving your site due to slow load times. Unsure how fast your website loads or how to make improvements to your site that increase load time? Check out our guide to improving website load time.

Using Trust Signals

Trust signals like customer testimonials, SSL certificates, and industry accreditations can boost the credibility of your site. They reassure visitors that your site is trustworthy and that you’re a reliable business, meaning a higher percentage of people turn into paying customers.

Want To Increase Website Conversions?

At Futuretheory, we understand the importance of website conversion and how it can be a game-changer for your business. Our team focuses on creating and refining websites that not only attract visitors but effectively convert them into loyal customers or active community members with our bespoke web design.

If you’re looking to elevate your website’s performance and drive tangible results, we’re here to help. Our expertise in web design and development, combined with a keen understanding of digital marketing and what drives conversions, means the websites we create are powerful business assets for our clients. Contact us for a free quote to discuss how we can ensure your business is growing.   

Benefits Of Using Breadcrumbs Navigation

Breadcrumbs navigation makes it easy for users to navigate around complicated websites. They improve the user experience by clearly showing the website’s structure, helping users understand their current location and how they can return to previous pages without relying on the back button. This feature is especially useful on complex websites with multiple levels of content. Secondly, breadcrumbs support better Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) by providing search engines with a clear view of the structure of a website, potentially boosting the site’s ranking in Google search results. 

Last but not least, they can help reduce bounce rates by encouraging users to explore the site more instead of leaving if they can’t find what they’re looking for immediately. Reduced bounce rates lead to better conversion rates: The longer someone spends exploring your site, the more likely they are to convert into a paying customer or client. Overall, integrating breadcrumbs is a straightforward way to make sites more user-friendly and search-engine-friendly.

Different Types Of Breadcrumb Navigation

There are three main types of breadcrumb navigation used in web design, each serving a unique purpose.  Each breadcrumb type enhances navigation in different ways, making it important to choose the right one for your site’s needs.

The most common types of website breadcrumbs are:

• Hierarchy-based breadcrumbs
• Attribute-based breadcrumbs
• Path-based breadcrumbs

Hierarchy-Based Breadcrumbs

Hierarchy-based breadcrumbs, otherwise known as location-based breadcrumb navigation, are the most possible breadcrumb path you’ll stumble across. Location-based breadcrumbs show the user their position within the website hierarchy, providing a clear path from the home page to the current page. Each part of the breadcrumb is usually separated by a “greater than” symbol (>) or similar divider, with the last item in the trail (the current page) often presented as plain text rather than a clickable link. This keeps the trail clear and easy to follow.

We use location-based breadcrumb navigation on our own website. For example, if you find yourself reading SEO articles on our website, you’ll see the breadcrumb trail Home > Resources> Search Engine Optimisation at the top left of the screen. Had enough of SEO? Users can quickly go back to the resources page and jump ship to read about website design instead or go back to the homepage.

Attribute-Based Breadcrumbs

Unlike location-based breadcrumbs that follow the site’s fixed hierarchy, attribute-based breadcrumbs are dynamic and change based on the attributes the user selects. This flexibility makes them particularly useful for navigating complex inventories or content libraries.  A mainstay of eCommerce websites, these breadcrumbs display the categories or attributes that the user has selected or that apply to the current product or page. Attributes can include things like brand, size, colour, or any other characteristic that helps define the item.

Path-Based Breadcrumbs

Path-based breadcrumbs, also known as history-based breadcrumbs, show the entire path a user took to get to the current page they’re on rather than just the attribute of that page of the site’s overall hierarchy. The breadcrumbs are unique to that user and their browsing session, providing a more personalised experience and allowing the user to retrace their steps more easily. The catch is that users don’t always browse in a logical way, often jumping around wildly instead, meaning path-based breadcrumbs can quickly become convoluted on large sites. They’re better suited for simple sites where users can only take so many paths, where the benefits to the user’s navigation experience outweigh the potential for confusion.

How To Add Breadcrumb Navigation To Your Website Design

Implementing breadcrumb navigation on your website is more of a necessity than an option if you have a large site and want to provide a positive user experience, especially for eCommerce. Fortunately, the process of including breadcrumbs on your website is straightforward enough. To get started, decide which type of breadcrumb suits your site best: location-based for hierarchical structures, path-based for tracking user navigation, or attribute-based for sites with filtering options. Once you have made your choice, follow these steps:

1. Map out your site’s structure: Understand and outline your website’s hierarchy or the paths users might take. This step is crucial for location-based and attribute-based breadcrumbs.
2. Design your breadcrumbs: Keep the design simple and intuitive. Breadcrumbs should be easy to read and click but shouldn’t overshadow the main content. Use arrows, chevrons, or slashes to indicate the path progression.
3. Place breadcrumbs consistently: Breadcrumbs are generally placed at the top of a page, below the navigation bar, but above the page title. Consistent placement helps users quickly find and use them.
4. Implement breadcrumbs in code: For location-based and attribute-based breadcrumbs, you can manually create links based on your site structure or use plugins that automatically generate breadcrumb trails. Popular SEO plugins for WordPress, like Rankmath and Yoast SEO, have built-in functionality that allows you to place breadcrumbs within a page. This might sometimes need tweaking but generally works quite well out of the box. For path-based breadcrumbs, consider using session or cookie data to track and display the user’s path.
5. Integrate with SEO: Use structured data markup, like Schema.org’s breadcrumb list, to help search engines understand and display your breadcrumbs in search results. This step is beneficial for improving your site’s SEO.
6. Test and refine: Once breadcrumbs are implemented, test them with real users. Look for any navigation issues or confusion and refine the design or placement as needed.

Breadcrumb Trail Best Practices

There are a few rules you should always follow if you want your breadcrumbs to be more of a help to users than a hindrance. Most importantly, your breadcrumbs should be intuitive and easy to understand. They should clearly indicate the user’s current location within the site’s hierarchy and provide a clear path back to previous pages. You can achieve this by using descriptive labels and a logical hierarchy of page links.

Secondly, ensure your breadcrumbs integrate seamlessly into your website’s overall design. They should be visually consistent with the rest of your site’s navigation and design elements and not be obtrusive or distracting to the user. Last but not least, it’s important to ensure that your breadcrumbs are always up-to-date and accurate. If a user clicks on a link in the breadcrumb trail and ends up on a different page than expected, it can be confusing and frustrating. Regularly review and update your breadcrumbs to ensure that they always provide accurate and helpful information to your users, especially if you frequently change your website’s site structure.

There are a few other things you need to cross off your checklist to design better breadcrumbs:

1. Keep It Simple: Breadcrumb menus should be straightforward, with concise text that clearly describes each page or category. Avoid using lengthy titles or complex jargon that could confuse users. 
2. Use a Logical Hierarchy: The breadcrumb trail must reflect a logical structure, aiding users in understanding your site’s layout. Each step should logically follow the previous one, providing a clear path back to the home page or main category.
3. Ensure Clickability: Breadcrumbs are links. Apart from the current page, every item in the breadcrumb trail should be clickable unless you want frustrated users.
4. Maintain Consistency: For the best user experience, place breadcrumbs consistently across pages and maintain uniform separators between levels. This consistency allow uses to find breadcrumbs and retrace their steps quickly.
5. Highlight the Current Page: Make sure to clearly indicate the current page within the breadcrumb trail. Typically, the current page is shown as non-clickable text and may be styled differently to emphasise that it’s the final point in the navigation path.
6. Don’t Use Breadcrumbs as the Primary Navigation Menu: Breadcrumbs should act as a secondary navigation scheme and never replace the main navigation bar at the top of the page. Your main navigation should remain clear and intuitive, with breadcrumbs providing additional guidance. 

Using Breadcrumb Navigation 

Using breadcrumb navigation isn’t always necessary. If they have no practical benefit to the user, they only risk overwhelming the user with too many navigation options. To strike the right balance, we prefer path-based breadcrumbs and ensure breadcrumbs appear when users are at least two clicks deep. Here’s an example of a website we decided where applying breadcrumb trails was unnecessary: https://curlycuts.com.au/

Ultimately, we make an educated call on how far into the website a user is and how likely they are to need context about their location on a website. The only way to do this accurately is to carefully consider the user’s needs and behaviour. This is always the key tenet of good web design, whether you’re developing an entire website or just implementing small features like breadcrumb navigation. It helps us create seamless and intuitive websites that never fail to deliver a positive user experience.

It can seem almost impossible to decide between the two, as both Shopify and WordPress have their merits and pitfalls. Ultimately, which one is the right choice comes down to your specific needs and what matters most to you when building an eCommerce site. In this article, we’ll thoroughly explain the Shopify vs WordPress debate so you can make an informed decision about which one is best for your business.

What Is WordPress?

WordPress is a content management system that allows online store owners complete control over their website’s customisation, hosting, and plugins. As a result of this high level of customisation and control, WordPress is the most popular content management system in the world – approximately 43% of websites in the world are powered by WordPress.

WordPress is an open-source software, meaning it’s free to use, modify and distribute. As a result, WordPress is home to a vibrant community of developers who are constantly creating new WordPress plugins and extensions, as well as WordPress themes. Most of these are free to use, and new ones are added every day, meaning WordPress is an extremely flexible way to build a website. The downside is that WordPress website owners have to pay for hosting, maintenance, and domain name registration from a third party.

It’s important to note that in this article and our website as a whole, we’re referring to WordPress.org instead of WordPress.com unless specified otherwise. WordPress.com is a pay-to-use website builder rather than an open-source content management system. If you’d like to learn about the difference between the two and the pros and cons of each, we covered it extensively in our article ‘WordPress.com vs WordPress.org – What’s The Difference?’

What Is Shopify?

Shopify is an all-in-one platform that was founded in Canada in 2006 and has since gained a reputation as one of the best eCommerce website builders around. Shopify was designed to simplify the process of creating and managing an online store by bundling everything you need into one package. This includes web hosting, security, payment processing, and even inventory management. 

Overall, Shopify is a popular option for business owners who don’t have the budget or tech knowledge to develop a custom website and are looking for a hassle-free solution for building an eCommerce site. However, the downside of Shopify is that website owners have to pay to use Shopify, and the website builder offers limited customisation options when compared to WordPress sites.

Choosing Between Shopify And WordPress

When choosing between any CMS or website builder, here are the top things to consider:

• Pricing and costs
• Ease of use
• eCommerce capabilities
• SEO and marketing power
• Level of control and customisation
• Customer support available
• Security

We’ll go over each other these considerations below and give a full comparison of Shopify vs WordPress to help you make up your mind! It’s important to take into account your specific needs and preferences – no website builder or CMS is perfect, so making a list of your priorities will help you assess which one works best for you.

Pricing and Costs

Pricing is one of the main differences between Shopify vs WordPress, and it’s a big one! Here’s how WordPress and Shopify stack up when it comes to your wallet:

Shopify Pricing And Costs

Shopify offers tiered pricing plans, each with different features and transaction fees. While the basic Shopify plan is relatively cheap at $56 AUD a month as of 2023, you’ll have to upgrade to pricier plans like Advanced Shopify for added functionalities like multiple staff accounts or third-party calculated shipping rates. You’ll also have to pay $14.95 per year for your domain name. Even taking into account what you save on third-party hosting costs, this results in a lot more money spent in the long term than WordPress. Here are the different Shopify plans:

WordPress Pricing And Costs

While the WordPress software itself is free, there’s still a variety of costs involved. These include: 

• Hosting Costs: Unlike Shopify, WordPress requires you to arrange your own web hosting. WordPress hosting costs can range from affordable shared hosting plans to more expensive dedicated hosting, depending on your website’s size and traffic.
• Themes and Plugins: While there are thousands of free themes and plugins available, premium options often come with a price tag. These can enhance your website’s functionality and design but will add to your overall expenses.
• Development and Maintenance: If you’re not tech-savvy, you might need to hire a developer for initial setup or ongoing maintenance. This can be a one-time cost for setup or an ongoing expense for regular updates and troubleshooting.
• Additional Costs: Depending on your needs, you may incur additional costs for things like premium plugins for SEO, e-commerce functionalities, enhanced security, and backup solutions.

WordPress is known for its flexibility, but this can also mean variable costs. It’s best suited for those who want more control over their website and are willing to manage and pay for the associated responsibilities that come with it.

Ease of Use

Shopify Ease Of Use

Shopify is designed with a focus on simplicity. Its user-friendly interface allows for straightforward setup of an online store, even for those with limited technical skills. The process of adding products, customising the store’s design, and managing daily operations like order processing and product updates is facilitated by intuitive tools and clear directions.

WordPress Ease Of Use

WordPress, while offering more flexibility and customisation options, has a steeper learning curve. Setting up a site with WordPress means dealing with hosting, choosing themes, and integrating with third-party apps and plugins. The process can be overwhelming for beginners, especially if you want to custom-develop features or have issues that you need to troubleshoot. WordPress is great if you’re already comfortable with website development and ready to put in the elbow grease or are willing to outsource the process to experts – resulting in a more customised and powerful website overall. 

eCommerce Features: Shopify vs WordPress Comparison

Shopify eCommerce Features

It’s all in the name: Shopify is an eCommerce platform designed specifically for online retail, and that comes with a lot of benefits for Shopify users. It offers a comprehensive set of built-in eCommerce tools that are ready to use out of the box, covering everything from product management to payment processing and shipping, making it easier to set up and run an online store. 

Overall, Shopify is ideal if you’re looking for an eCommerce solution that’s straightforward to manage. However, this does come at a significant cost: Shopify charges a fee ranging between 1.4% to 2% of each transaction if you don’t use their integrated payment processing system, Shopify Payments, which can add up quickly and eat into your long-term profits.

WordPress And WooCommerce eCommerce Features

Setting up an eCommerce store in WordPress isn’t as straightforward as with Shopify, and you need to install a plugin like WooCommerce to sell products on a WordPress site. Although this may seem like an additional step tacked on to the already arduous process of creating an online store, it offers greater flexibility and control over the design and functionality of your store.  Most eCommerce sites on WordPress are run using WooCommerce, and it’s widely considered the best eCommerce plugin on the market.

WooCommerce allows you to create themes suited to your brand and industry, optimise your checkout experience and create custom product pages quickly. One of the biggest advantages is that it’s completely free and open-source. This means that you won’t have to pay any transaction fees or other hidden costs that are associated with other eCommerce platforms like Shopify.

All up, while setting up an eCommerce store on WordPress might need you to go through some extra steps compared to other platforms, installing WooCommerce offers greater flexibility, control, and cost-effectiveness in the long run. WooCommerce was created by the founders of WordPress, so you know it’s legit!

SEO And Marketing

Shopify SEO And Marketing

Shopify has built-in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) features and tools that make it relatively straightforward to optimise your Shopify stores for search engines. It offers basic SEO settings like editable meta titles and descriptions, automatic sitemap generation, and mobile-friendly themes. Shopify also provides integrated tools for email marketing, social media integration, and creating discount codes. However, for more advanced SEO and marketing needs, you might need to rely on third-party apps available in the Shopify App Store.

WordPress SEO And Marketing

WordPress offers you complete control over every aspect of your website’s SEO and access to thousands of free and paid SEO plugins – this is ideal if you like taking a more hands-on approach to SEO and don’t like leaving anything that important up to chance. 

Using WordPress allows you to oversee every step of the development and design of your website, meaning you can make sure your website is as SEO-friendly as possible from the very start instead of relying on Shopify and its systems and tools. Additionally, the ability to choose a reliable hosting provider yourself and choose your hosting plan means you can get complete assurance your website is fast and reliable, both important factors for SEO.

Control And Customisation 

Shopify Control And Customisation

Shopify offers a moderate level of control and a high level of ease of use. It provides a range of themes and an intuitive drag-and-drop editor that allows for basic customisation without needing extensive technical skills. However, there’s a limit to how much you can customise on Shopify without delving into more complex features like editing the platform’s Liquid code. Despite Shopify’s focus on eCommerce, this level of customisation isn’t the best for your online store. To stand out in the competitive environment of online shopping, it’s important your website is as custom as possible to match your branding and increase customer memorability. 

WordPress Control And Customisation

As an open-source platform, WordPress offers users unparalleled control and customisation. You can modify essentially every element of your site with complete access to the code and thousands of themes and plugins – the possibilities are almost limitless. This level of control is ideal if you have a specific vision for their site or require custom functions that simple website builders can’t offer. However, this also means that taking full advantage of WordPress’s customisation potential often requires technical knowledge or the budget to outsource development to a professional or agency.

Customer Support

Shopify Customer Support

One of the things Shopify is most known for is stellar customer support. Shopify support includes a 24/7 phone line and live chat, meaning you can get instant support, even in the middle of the night. This 24/7 support is available no matter what type of plan you’re on. Shopify also has highly active forums, thanks to the millions of Shopify sites, and a help centre with helpful FAQs to answer any questions. In the WordPress vs Shopify debate, there’s a clear winner when it comes to customer support. 

WordPress Customer Support 

Open-source platforms like WordPress don’t offer any formal support service. However, there are 810 million WordPress websites out there, meaning there’s an incredibly vibrant community of WordPress users and experts offering up a wealth of information and WordPress training. While this isn’t the same as a dedicated phone line for 24/7 support, any information you need to know regarding WordPress eCommerce, the different versions of WordPress, or updating a WordPress plugin is definitely out there.

Security and Compliance

Shopify Security And Compliance

As a hosted platform, Shopify takes care of almost everything concerning the security of your website, including security updates and maintenance, as well as providing SSL (Secure Socket Layer) certificates for all its websites. This ensures that all customer data is encrypted during transactions. It’s also important to note that Shopify has to comply with PCI (Payment Card Industry) standards, which is essential for safely processing credit cards. 

WordPress’ Security And Compliance 

In contrast, security in WordPress is more hands-on. While the platform itself is secure, being open-source means that the responsibility of maintaining security largely falls on the user. This includes implementing your own SSL certificates, choosing secure payment gateways, and ensuring regular updates of the WordPress core, themes, and plugins. Additionally, the vast array of plugins means you’ll need to be cautious about what you install to avoid vulnerabilities. 

Essentially, choosing WordPress means you need to take a proactive approach to security. This either requires some technical know-how on your part or the assistance of a professional.

Shopify Vs WordPress: Final Thoughts

If you’re still wondering whether to choose Shopify or WordPress, let’s break it down:

If you’re just starting out or if you need a simple, straightforward solution without much technical hassle, Shopify might be the better option. It’s tailor-made for ease of use, offering an all-in-one package that takes care of everything from hosting to security. This user-friendly approach allows you to focus more on running your business and less on the nitty-gritty of website management.
Overall, it’s a solid choice if you don’t yet have the technical skills or the budget for a custom-built website. 

On the other hand, if you highly value customisation, flexibility, and having control over every aspect of your site, then creating an eCommerce site with WordPress and using WooCommerce is a better option. WordPress offers an unparalleled level of customisation, which can be a significant advantage for those looking to create a unique online presence. It’s well-suited for businesses that have specific requirements or those who plan to scale up significantly and need a platform that can grow and adapt with them.

In the end, the choice comes down to your individual business needs and what you want to get out of your website. They’re both great options on the whole – just make sure you take the time to do your research and make a clear list of your priorities before jumping in.

In the age of website templates and DIY website builders, many businesses are questioning if custom web design is still worth it – but having a website that reflects your unique brand identity through seamless, bespoke design delivers a higher conversion rate than template-based websites. In this article, we’ll explain why.

What Is A Website Template?

A website template is a pre-designed and pre-coded framework for creating a website. All a user has to do to get a templated website launched and live is change the wording to suit their business, add some content, and they’re ready to go. Popular providers of templated websites are:

• WordPress.com
• Wix
• Webflow
• GoDaddy
• Squarespace

These pre-built websites require no technical skill for business owners to set up themselves, making them an attractive option for the less-tech-savvy business owners out there with a limited budget, as there’s no need to hire a professional web design team. All you need to do is find the one template you like for your site and begin promoting your products or services on it that same day. However, pre-built websites come with downsides – they often offer limited customisation options, features, and lower performance metrics than well-built custom websites. This hurts your business’s online presence in the long term.

Why Go With A Custom Designed Website?

Custom websites are designed and developed from scratch, either by a freelance web designer or a web development company who have control of everything from your website’s landing pages to the back-end interface. While using a template to create your website might have a quicker development time and a lower cost in the short term, the time and extra expense that come with custom website development often pay off significantly in the long term. Building your website from scratch using custom design means:

• The chance to create a more memorable first impression
• Design tailored to your branding
• Better user experience 
• Higher Search Engine Optimisation
• Better mobile responsiveness 
• More scalability as your business needs change 

Want A Professional Website? First Impressions Matter

Attention spans online are fleeting, so the importance of a positive first impression can’t be overstated – especially for small businesses where every chance counts. Websites often serve as the initial point of contact between a brand and its audience, and within seconds, users form judgments that can influence their entire perception of your business. A custom-designed website from a reputable development agency gives you a much higher chance of making that impression a positive one that sticks with users even after they click off your site.

Ensure Your Website Stands Out With Bespoke Website Design

Establishing clear branding is integral to the long-term success of your online marketing strategy. It helps differentiate you from your competitors and clearly convey your business’s unique value proposition to potential customers. This is especially important for new businesses that don’t already have a loyal customer base and online businesses that need to stand out as much as possible in the digital landscape. Branding includes things like your:

• Colours
• Logo 
• Fonts
• Style choices
• Messaging and language 
• Overall ‘vibe’

Choosing to go with a custom website design allows the web designers and web development team you choose to work with to tailor every single one of these elements to match your branding during the design stage. On the other hand, most templates and themes have been downloaded by other businesses hundreds or even thousands of times. Additionally, most ‘pre-made’ website designs significantly limit the ability of your design agency to customise and personalise your website during the design process. This means a website without distinct graphic designs, colour schemes and navigation menus. 

A Custom-Designed Website Means A Seamless User Experience

A successful website is about so much more than just visual appeal – it’s vital that a new website for your business effectively engages people through positive User Experience (UX) as well. UX is all about designing a website that caters to the needs of users, including ease of use, fast loading times and a clear navigation menu. The better user experience your website provides to users, the better ability it’ll have to convert them into customers. This is why it’s one of the key principles of good web design.

Professional custom web design and development always places UX at the forefront when creating a website by keeping in mind accessibility, functionality, and logical visual hierarchy. This attention to detail, combined with flexibility and custom designs, contributes to a better UX compared to template-built websites. 

Choosing to go the custom route for your web design project rather than using a pre-built template also means website designers can add personalised features to your site to suit your user’s needs, improving UX. Examples of this might be a store locator, seamless checkout processes, or tailored search functionality. 

Responsive Website Design Agency

Responsive web design means your website looks, loads and functions perfectly no matter what device your users are browsing on, be it on mobile, tablet or desktop. All these devices have drastically different screen sizes, meaning your website design needs to be able to adapt accordingly without losing any functionality to be considered responsive.

Optimising your website for mobile devices might be more important than you realise: According to DataReportal, over 55% of all website visitors are browsing on a mobile device as of November 2023, up from only 30% in 2015. Most template website options are much less responsive than what you’d expect from a high-quality web design. This means you risk alienating over half your website traffic with a buggy layout and slow loading times if you use an unresponsive template.

Experienced web designers, on the other hand, are able to make sure your website is optimised for all devices using fluid grids, breakpoints, and media queries. You can read our article defining responsive design and its importance if you want to know more.

Better Optimise Your Website For Search Engines

Search engine optimisation (SEO) means tailoring your website to Google’s 240+ search engine ranking programs, which affects how high your website ranks on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS). Most of these factors are to analyse the quality of the UX your website provides. The better UX your website provides, the higher it will rank on SERPs, driving significantly more organic traffic to your website without the need for paid ads. 

Your website’s design can affect SEO significantly, and the only way to ensure your website follows SEO best practices is by hiring a reputable web development agency to create a custom web design rather than creating a DIY website with a basic website builder. Here’s why:

• Clean code and better crawling: Many template websites are built using bloated and out-of-date code. This makes it harder for Google to understand your web pages and rank them accordingly. 
• Better website performance: Custom web design from an experienced web developer means you can guarantee your website is as fast as possible, providing a better UX.
• More responsive design: Mobile optimisation is one of Google’s key ranking factors, and custom web design ensures this. 
• Reduced bounce rate: Bounce rate is how many users only see the landing page of your website before clicking off. Websites with a better UX have a lower bounce rate, indicating to Google that your website provides value to users.
• SEO plugins: Custom websites built on Content management platforms like WordPress and Drupal allow you to access 1000s of free plugins to manage your website, many of which provide more SEO control to improve your online presence.

eCommerce Web Development 

If you’re hoping to use your website for eCommerce, a premade website running on Shopify with limited functionality and customisation options won’t cut it the majority of the time. Instead, consider going with a custom web development agency with eCommerce web design experience. This will allow you to customise a smooth checkout process for your online store, product sorting, and specific search parameters for your users. Running your custom-built website on WordPress.org also means you’ll be able to use the powerful WooCommerce plugin to upload, update and sell products with ease on your website.

Custom Web Design Services for Canberrans

Futuretheory is a full-service website design, development, and digital marketing agency. Although we’re Canberra-based, we offer some of the best custom web design Melbourne, Sydney, and Australia as a whole has to offer. The websites we build are always unique, fast, secure and beautifully designed. Our team of experienced web developers and web designers will work closely with you every step of the way to ensure that your website is tailored to the specific needs and branding of your business. 

We also offer web services, including website hosting, maintenance, and search engine marketing. Our marketing team, web designers and developers have all the expertise necessary to help you grow forward online. If we sound like the agency for you, get in touch today.

Web Design Canberra 

Our experienced team of web designers knows how to balance beauty and function perfectly. The key tenants of our website design process are:

• Fully responsive: A  responsive design is guaranteed when you work with us. All of the websites we deliver are fully functional on mobile devices, not just desktops.
• Completely custom websites: We design websites that reflect your brand, and we never use premade templates, so your website looks completely distinctive.
• Search engine optimisation friendly: Web design can affect your search ranking. That’s why we use the WordPress Content Management System (CMS), which allows us to ensure your website is search engine optimised every step of the design process.

The end result of following these principles are websites that are not only visually stunning but align with your branding and help your business drive forward its goals. It’s this dedication and professionalism that has earned us a reputation as one of the highest recommended companies offering website design Canberra has to offer.

WordPress Web Development Services

Since 2008, we’ve built WordPress websites for both large and small businesses across Australia. Thanks to this experience, we’ve been able to fine-tune our website development process down to an art along the way. We develop awesome websites that work beautifully across all devices with a user-friendly layout that loads quickly.

Crucially, our websites are also intuitive to use and easy to manage and edit. During website development, we make it a priority to build a user-friendly backend that makes it easier for our clients to regularly update and maintain their sites without hassle. 

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) That Offers A Competitive Advantage

Also called Search Engine Marketing, our SEO campaigns are designed to help your website appear higher on search engine result pages (SERPs) on Google so you can connect with more potential customers. Our team understands that an efficient, well-thought-out strategy does more than just include keywords in your content. Instead, our efforts look at your website holistically, from the structure of your site to the user experience and page speed. The end result of this technical and content-based approach is long-term, steady SEO success that boosts your website’s overall visibility.

Affordable WordPress Website Maintenance & Management

Our website maintenance services offer you peace of mind that your website is consistently secure, fast and up to date for a fair price. Our team gathers their WordPress expertise to ensure your website works as a 24/7 asset to promote your business and has a high level of security and all the latest updates. This means you can sit back and focus on the other aspects of your business, knowing your website is in good hands. 

Web Hosting Tailored To Our Canberra Clients

We offer highly reliable website hosting with a 99.9% uptime guarantee, unlimited bandwidth and free SSL certificates. Additionally, our web hosting servers are located in Canberra – this means faster loading times for your target audience and, ultimately, a better user experience and higher SERP ranking.

Looking For Reliable Canberra Website Services?

If you’re in the market for a Canberra agency that you can rely on to do a great job, no matter your requirements, send us an enquiry today for an obligation-free quote. We offer site hosting, maintenance, development and design services for small and established businesses, and we’re flexible working with a range of budgets. We also offer digital marketing services, including Google Ads, social media, and email marketing.

At Futuretheory, we’ve designed and developed over 100 websites. Along the way, we’ve refined our process of planning a website into a well-oiled machine that consistently delivers positive outcomes to our clients. In this article, we’ll guide you through each and every step we follow to create an effective website plan:

How to Plan a Website

Creating a well-structured plan for your website is a vital step in ensuring the success of your online presence. Having a website project plan helps simplify the entire process, aids in adhering to your budget, and ensures your website also reaches the best possible outcome. Our approach has seven phases that we always follow when building a website, each with its own set of requirements and objectives. Our seven phases of planning a website at a high level are:

• Phase 1: Research and Discovery (Objectives, Target Audience, and Competitors Research)
• Phase 2: Details and Resouce Planning (Sitemap, Budget, and Timeline)
• Phase 3: Website Design (Wireframes, Mood Board, and UX design)
• Phase 4: Website Development (Front-End, Back-End, CMS, and SEO)
• Phase 5: Testing (Quality Assurance, Performance, Cross-Browser and User Testing)
• Phase 6: Launch (SEO, Hosting, Analytics and Monitoring)
• Phase 7: Ongoing Review (Updates, Monitoring, and Feedback)

Phase 1: Research and Discovery

There’s a lot of truth to the old saying, ‘If you fail to plan, you plan to fail’. That is why the research and discovery phase is one of the most essential steps to planning your website. By taking the time to conduct thorough research and analysis, you can gain a deeper understanding of your target audience and identify your competitors, which can help you make informed decisions throughout the website development process.

Armed with this knowledge, you can create a website tailored to meet your audience’s needs while standing out from the competition. A successful website depends on creating a plan, and the research and discovery phase is the first step in ensuring that you achieve your website goals.

Define Objectives

You need to clearly define what you want to achieve with a new website and what the purpose of the website will be. Are you hoping to increase brand awareness, launch an ecommerce website or improve communication with your audience? Each of these examples look very different during the web design process and development phase and require different resources. Defining the specific purpose of your website is crucial for:

• Clarity and focus: Defining your objectives prevents your site from becoming a confusing mix of ideas and features. This focus ensures that your design and content align with your goals.
• Measurable success: Well-defined objectives make success measurable. You can track progress with metrics and determine if your website is meeting its intended purpose. 
• Resource Allocation: Clear objectives and planning can help you make decisions about design, features, and content creation. This ensures that your resources, including time, budget, and manpower, are used efficiently.
• User Experience: Clear objectives lead to a better user experience. Users appreciate a site designed with a purpose, making their journey more efficient and enjoyable, ultimately increasing conversions.

Target Audience

Indentifying who you’re trying to reach is a pivotal step that will influence the design, the type of content to include in your website, and the overall approach. Where are they located, who are they, and how will they use the website? Ultimately, your website’s success hinges on its ability to cater to your target audience’s needs, preferences, and expectations. Here’s why it’s so important: 

• Customisation: Knowing your target audience allows you to tailor the website content, design, and user experience to resonate with them, leading to higher engagement and conversions as visitors will feel like the site speaks directly to their needs.
• Relevance: Defining a clear target audience enables you to create website content that’s relevant to their interests and pain points. This establishes a genuine connection, fostering trust and loyalty.
• Competitive advantage: Tailoring your website to your distinct target audience allows you to stand out by offering a more compelling experience, differentiating you from competitors with a more generic approach and generating more website traffic.

Competitor Analysis

The next step in the planning stage is identifying your direct competitors, and studying their websites allows you to identify gaps and opportunities. You can use this information to improve your website structure and plan, as well as to determine what to avoid. Moreover, studying your competitors’ websites can also serve as a benchmark for your website’s performance, helping you to set realistic goals and expectations based on industry standards.

A lot of popular SEO tools offer competitor analysis. Some of the tools we use and recommend are:

• SEMRush – https://www.semrush.com/
• Ahrefs – https://ahrefs.com/
• SpyFu – https://www.spyfu.com/
• SERanking – https://seranking.com/

SEO Keyword Research

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a cornerstone of creating a website plan and can’t be overlooked. The first step is keyword research, which involves identifying the relevant keywords to aim for in order to rank higher on search engine results pages. Keeping in mind your target audience and the keywords your competitors are ranking for, use tools like Google’s Keyword Planner to find keywords relevant to your business or niche that you should aim to rank for.

In tandem with Google’s keyword planner, the four online tools we listed above are an excellent place to start conducting your keyword research.

Phase 2: Details and Resouce Planning

Sitemap

The next step is to create a website sitemap. A sitemap is a visual representation of a website’s structure and hierarchy. It acts like a map that outlines the organisation of a website’s pages, content, and links. This helps designers and developers plan and organise the content and ensure that your website is logically arranged and easy to navigate. Our favourite website sitemap tool is Octopus – https://octopus.do/.

Technology Stack

Now, it’s time to decide on the technology stack you’ll use during web design and development and how you will host your website after launch. Selecting the tools that best suit your website needs, tech skills, and budget is crucial to ensuring the process goes smoothly and you achieve the best possible outcome. This includes the Content Management System (CMS) your website will be built and run on, the programming language used to develop it, and what kind of web hosting you’ll choose. 

The technology stack you use is a strategic decision that impacts your website’s functionality, performance, and ease of maintenance. It’s important to weigh up the long-term costs of each option, including licensing, hosting, and maintenance.

Budget and Timeline

Budget and timeline are crucial to any project plan, and building your website is no exception. The first step is defining the project scope – the number of web pages, features, and complexity of your website. A larger and more complex website will require a larger budget and a longer timeline. It’s also essential to account for the small costs that add up in your budget, including the technology stack, web hosting, domain registration, and third-party integrations your website needs.

Regarding the timeline, remember to account for every step from the initial research to pre-launch testing and allocate extra time for revisions. 

Legal Requirements

An important part of planning is ensuring you account for any legal requirements your business website has to meet regarding data protection and website accessibility. You might save yourself a headache by making sure your website is accessible and in line with disability access laws from the jump instead of having to go back and make significant changes after launch. Here are some examples of legal requirements you have to account for as the website owner:

• If you collect any personal information on your website, like email addresses, you need to have a privacy policy on your website. 
• If you sell any goods or services on your website, you need to be in line with consumer laws and include a refund, warranty and shipping information in your terms and conditions
• If you publish information or advice on your website, you need to include a website disclaimer
• Your website has to be designed and developed in a way that allows individuals with disabilities to access its content and features

Phase 3: Website Design

You’re ready to move on to the design! Our favourite tools to use are Adobe XD and Figma. When designing a website, it’s always important to keep in mind ease of use above all else. Check out our article on the fundamentals of great web design before you get started to build a solid knowledge base.

Here are the steps you need to include in your website design plan:

Wireframes

Creating the wireframe using Adobe or Figma is the first step of designing your website. A wireframe is a visual prototype illustrating the website’s content layout, navigation, and behaviour. There’s no need to worry about the content of your website at this stage – simply fill the wireframe with placeholder or ‘dummy’ content to get an idea of how it will look. This helps identify and rectify any potential issues early in the design process.

Wireframes are a crucial part of collaboration between a professional web designer and their client. They provide a chance for the client to get an initial look at what their website will look like before moving on to the development stage and add any input they might have.

Mood Board

Mood boards are a great tool to help guide the visual style of your site during the design stage, including the colours, fonts and images to include on your website. Creating mood boards helps you narrow down the overall stylistic feel of your website. We find mood board inspiration for websites using sites like Dribble, Behance, and Awwards.

Make sure you keep your brand’s style guide in mind when creating a mood board to ensure the final design aligns with your brand identity and goals. 

UI/UX Design

Now that you’ve solidified the look and feel of your site, it’s time to design the user interface, create the website layout and add the images for your website. If you want to design a successful website, make sure to factor user experience into every single design choice you make. The end goal, even beyond visual appeal, is to design a website that is easy to use and responsive. Ensure you use breakpoints, flexible media and images, and fluid grids to make your design as responsive as possible and guarantee a well-designed website. 

If you’re not familiar with responsive design and its importance, our article on the definition of responsive web design is a great place to start.

Phase 4: Website Development

There are many approaches you can take to develop a website. You can either develop the website from scratch, hire a freelance developer or agency, or use a premade website theme or template. It all depends on your technical expertise, the features you’d like your website to have, and your budget. Some of the most popular website development tools and website builders are:

• WordPress – WordPress is the most popular CMS in the world, thanks to the high level of customisation and flexibility it offers. With thousands of themes and plugins available, you can create a wide range of websites, from simple blogs to complex ecommerce sites. Thanks to its user-friendly interface, it’s popular with developers and beginners alike.
• Squarespace – Squarespace is a popular website builder known for its user-friendly, drag-and-drop interface. It’s perfect if you want to create your website without coding skills and launch it quickly without breaking the bank. However, using a website builder like Squarespace means your customisation and plugin options are limited when compared to WordPress.
• Webflow – Webflow allows you to create basic websites without the need for coding knowledge and offers more customisation options than Squarespace. However, the pricing model means costs can quickly add up the more features you want,

Front-End Development

Front-end development focuses on the visible part of a website that users interact with directly. Front-end developers use languages like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to create the layout, design, and functionality of web pages. This stage is essentially when the web designer’s wireframe becomes ‘3D,’ and the interactive elements, such as forms and the navigation menu, are coded. Doing this right ensures the website functions exactly as it should for users.

Back-End Development

Back-end development is the process of coding the hidden infrastructure that powers the website. This includes the website’s server-side logic, databases, user management, security, API, and more. These functionalities are what allow the website to function seamlessly and securely. While users may not see the back-end, it’s the engine that powers the website, ensuring that everything runs efficiently and that user data is managed securely.

Content Management System

If you’re using a CMS, now is the time to integrate it. This means installing the CMS on your server, configuring the settings, and setting up the necessary databases and files. Once the CMS is in place, you can start adding content. The CMS simplifies content upload, enabling non-technical users to add text, images, videos, and other media through a user-friendly interface.

Mobile Responsiveness

Ensuring your website is optimised for mobile devices during the web development phase is paramount. This is essential for a good website these days – over 55% of all people using your website will do so from a mobile device. If your website isn’t responsive on mobile devices, you risk alienating over half your website traffic through poor user experience. Google also highly favours mobile-optimised websites in the search algorithm, so make sure to complete this step! Use responsive design frameworks and CSS media queries to adapt the layout and styling to different screen sizes. It’s also important to optimise the content, images, and interactive elements for mobile devices to create a seamless user experience.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

SEO is a critical stage of developing your website, as it ensures that the website is discoverable by search engines like Google, making it visible to a broader audience. This includes ensuring your website is fast, easy to use, and populated with keyword-rich content. Pay attention to the more minor details your website may be missing, like meta stage, header tags, and alt text for images. These small details give search engines more information about your website and help them rank it accordingly.

The content you plan should always have SEO in mind, and remember to implement on-page SEO strategies when planning the content on your site! Making sure your website is also optimised as well as well-designed ensures all your hard work pays off and people find your website on search engines.

Phase 5: Testing

Quality Assurance

Now that your website is designed and developed, you’re almost there. It’s time for quality assurance! This means identifying and addressing any technical issues, such as broken links, 404 errors, malfunctioning interactive elements, and proofreading for typos or grammatical errors. No developer or copywriter is perfect, so this step is essential to ensure your website successfully launches and is as professional and polished as possible. It’s the small details like broken links that often frustrate a user the most and damage your website’s credibility. 

Performance Testing

Performance testing before launching a website involves evaluating its speed, responsiveness, and overall efficiency to ensure it provides a fast and seamless user experience. You can use sites like Google PageSpeed Insights or GTmetrix to see how long each individual page on your website takes to load. If any of them take more than 4 seconds to load, you have to re-optimise it for the sake of user experience and SEO. Compressing images, minimising file sizes and using efficient coding practices can significantly improve performance.

Cross-browser and Device Testing

Once you’ve checked your website’s speed and optimised it accordingly, it’s time to make sure your website functions correctly and consistently across different browsers like Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Internet Explorer. Resolving any compatibility issues that may arise will help your website reach as wide an audience as possible successfully. You should also double-check your mobile is responsive by testing it on different devices, like mobiles and tablets. 

User Testing

Conducting user testing can help you uncover any less apparent issues with your website before launch. By gathering feedback from real users who interact with your site, you can discover any usability issues or areas for improvement and ensure that the website aligns with user preferences and expectations. 

User testing typically includes tasks like navigating the website, filling out forms, and providing feedback on their experience. This allows you to make informed adjustments before the site’s launch.

Phase 6: Launch

Pre-launch SEO

You’re on the home stretch – now it’s time to ensure the launch goes smoothly and your website gets the recognition it deserves after all your hard work. Putting in some more SEO work right before you launch will help! Make sure to submit your search map to search engines. This will help them crawl your site correctly and improve your chances of ranking highly on the results page. Next, set up your Google Analytics account and link it to your website – this will provide valuable SEO insights when it goes live. 

You should also dedicate some time to planning your content down the line and how you will promote your website after launch. This will make it easier to upload new content regularly after your site is launched – an essential part of SEO maintenance. 

Deployment and Web Hosting

Every website requires a host, and the host you pick can significantly impact your website’s security, speed, and SEO. Check out our article on how website hosting affects SEO and the different types of Canberra web hosting available to learn more. Using a reliable hosting service to deploy your website will set you up for success. Opt for a hosting plan that suits your website’s needs, whether shared hosting for smaller sites or dedicated servers for high-traffic websites. 

Double-check that all server configurations are in place and that domain settings are configured correctly to point to your website. This phase prepares your website for public access, making it available to users worldwide.

Website Launch

The moment of truth has arrived: it’s time to launch your website and make it accessible to the world. Once you’re confident that your site is ready for prime time, hit the ‘go live’ button with your hosting provider, and your website will be accessible to visitors. This marks the beginning of your online presence and the opportunity to connect with your audience! Just remember to promote the website continuously, whether through ongoing SEO or pay-per-click ads.

Post-Launch Website Analytics and Monitoring

Launching your website is just the start of a long journey for it to reach its maximum potential. To ensure the ongoing success of your website, keep an eye on post-launch analytics and monitor website performance and user engagement. 

Our favourite tool for this is Google Analytics, which is free – https://marketingplatform.google.com/about/analytics/. It enables you to track essential metrics like the kind of traffic your website gets, the number of visitors, and their behaviour on your site. Not all forms of traffic are equally important, and organic traffic should always be your priority. To learn more about organic traffic and how to generate it post-launch, we have a helpful article explaining the different types of traffic and how to increase organic traffic specifically.

Regularly monitoring these vital metrics will allow you to make data-driven improvements to your website and ensure that your site continues to perform optimally and remains aligned with your goals, helping you adapt to changing user needs and trends in your industry.

Phase 7: Ongoing Review

Updates

Staying on top of technology updates is an essential part of website maintenance. This is especially true for WordPress websites, as the themes and plugins require regular updates vital to the site’s function. Updates are also crucial for your website’s security, as they often include security patches! Consistently updating your website will help it adapt to changing trends and technology, maintaining its relevance and reliability for visitors.

As mentioned before, it’s also essential for SEO purposes to regularly update the content on your website to keep it fresh. Google favours websites that are routinely updated in the search engine rankings, meaning having an actively maintained website will directly help you reach more people. 

Monitoring

Regularly monitoring your website’s performance is another fundamental aspect of website maintenance. Use GT Metrix to track uptime (how often your website is down for users) and speed. These metrics help you immediately detect and rectify any problems, ensuring your website remains accessible and functional. There are also free online monitoring tools that help you identify any weak spots in your site’s security. Using these performance and security metrics tools – and often – will allow you to proactively protect your site from threats and maintain a positive user experience.

Feedback Loop

Metric tools are fantastic, but don’t forget about the value of direct feedback from the users of your website. Hearing from the users themselves allows you to gain direct insight into their experiences and expectations of your website, allowing you to make adjustments accordingly and offer a continuously improving user experience. You can encourage user input by implementing surveys, contact forms, or user comments. This will help you keep your website user-centric, which should always be the priority. 

Good Luck Creating Your New Website!

Planning a website can be daunting, but as we’ve outlined in this article, breaking it down into well-defined phases and steps can simplify the process. Whether you’re an experienced web designer or just starting, having a structured website plan is the key to success. By approaching your website development as a marketing strategy as much as a technical endeavour, following this website plan should set you up to create a website that engages your audience, stands out from the competition, and drives forward your business goals. We hope this website plan template serves you well!

Experienced Canberra Web Design and Development 

Although we’ve honed down this process to be as efficient and effective as possible, website creation is still something that takes time and expertise to get right. At Futuretheory, this is something we’ve learned after delivering over 100 websites to clients. If you’re interested in our website, design or marketing services, contact us today for an obligation-free quote. We’re passionate about every step of the website development and design process and the outcomes they deliver for our clients in Canberra and beyond. 

What is Web Design?

Web design is a crucial aspect of website construction, designing the ‘front end’, user-facing side of the website, including the visual design and user experience. This encompasses the website’s design and layout, as well as the overall style of a website. This includes the colour scheme, graphics, and overall interface that users see on the front-end layout of a website. The primary objective of an effective web designer is to create a website that is not only visually appealing but also user-friendly.

In addition to visual design, a web designer’s job includes other essential aspects of a website, such as ensuring that the site aligns with the client’s branding, encourages user engagement, and enables easy navigation. This means always keeping user experience (UX) and the user interface (UI) in mind throughout the design process. Many people think a web designer is a graphic artist, but they’re not the same thing: there are a lot more factors that go into a well-designed website. 

Web designers create a wireframe, which is a visual prototype that illustrates the website’s content layout, navigation, and behaviour. They then move on to deciding the website’s colour scheme and adding graphics and imagery. In essence, web design focuses on a website’s look, feel, and usability, shaping how users interact with and perceive it.

What is Web Development?

On the other hand, web developers focus on the behind-the-scenes of a website and back-end development. One of the biggest differences between a web developer and a designer is that they write code using programming languages such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to build web pages and the overall structure and functionality of the website. The web developer is responsible for selecting the platform the website runs on and writing code that ensures that the website is fast, secure, and works seamlessly across all devices. This is known as ‘responsive web design‘.

Web designers and web developers work in tangent with each other. While the web designer is responsible for the more visual aspects of a website and creating the website’s wireframe, the web developer is also responsible for writing the code that brings the vision to life. They build and enhance your website using their coding skills to ensure the website’s envisioned features and functions work correctly, including the navigation, forms, and interactive elements.

Defining the Difference Between Web Design and Web Development

Web development and design both play an integral role in creating a successful website, creating a union between design and functionality. The web designer is in charge of creating a striking visual appearance that promotes brand recognition and ease of use. A web developer is someone who uses code to make this design and make the website interactive, functional and ready for launch. The end result of good web designers and developers working side by side is an all-around attractive and effective website that meets the needs of both the business and potential customers visiting the site.

Similarities of Website Design & Website Development

While web design and web development are two distinct professions that require different skills, there are some areas where they overlap. Both occupations require technical knowledge and an understanding of programming languages like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

Functionality and ease of use are also fundamental principles of both disciplines. For web designers, this means creating a layout with a clear visual hierarchy that structures information in a way that makes the most sense for users. For web developers, this means coding a responsive, fast website that doesn’t break.

Another key similarity is that web designers and developers both need to take a client-centric approach. They have to understand the client’s needs, business objectives, and target audience well to build a website that aligns with their brand’s identity. A thorough understanding of the client’s expectations is crucial for both professions to deliver a website the client will be satisfied with.

The Need for Cohesion

Design and development are two essential parts of creating a website and both have to work harmoniously to achieve success. A developer can’t code a website without a design; inversely, a website designer can’t bring their creation to fruition without a developer coding it. A functional website should have visual elements and features that align seamlessly, meaning the developer and designer need to collaborate and combine their skills to develop and design a website with a positive outcome. 

Working cohesively means the designer has to use their eye for design but also work within the limits of what the developer has the time and ability to code, and the developer has to do their best to ensure the end product is how the designer envisioned it. Collaboration ensures that design and development decisions align, resulting in a cohesive user experience. Together, they bring the vision of a new website to life.

Achieving the Same Goal

Website development and design share the same goal: creating an effective website. Both the website’s visual design and its code and functionality play a vital role in achieving this goal. This means website development and design are equally important in delivering a website that meets the user’s and client’s requirements. Web designers create the idea and design style using design and editing software, then web developers use a website builder platform like Elementor to bring it to life. Both aspects of website creation are equally important.

Developers and designers work together to ensure that the website has a seamless user experience, is accessible to all users, and is optimised for search engines. Ultimately, the goal of both website development and design is to create a website that is not only aesthetically pleasing but also functions well and meets the needs of its users.

The Value of Visuals

The importance of the visual elements web designers bring to the table can’t be understated and goes beyond just looking good at first glance. A seasoned web designer knows how to leverage user psychology during the design process to drive forward business goals through strategic visual hierarchy and strong branding.

The choices the web designer makes dictate the first impression people get of your business from when they first arrive on your landing page onwards. The web designer holds the power to make sure that the impression is positive by creating a clean, professional, and visually appealing layout. This will encourage people to stay on your website longer, increasing the chance of conversions. 

Should I Hire a Web Designer or a Web Developer?

If you need a brand new website from scratch, you probably need the expertise of both a website developer and a website designer.  Both web designers and web developers play integral roles in the life cycle of a website. However, if you’re looking for a refresh or update of your current website, you might only need the services of one and will have to put thought and consideration into which one you choose. 

The first step is to assess how your current website can be improved and make a list of the changes you’d like to make. This will help you make an informed decision about whether to hire a web designer or web developer.

The answer depends greatly on what elements you want to change or add to a website. If you want to update the look of a website to be more modern, match new branding or keep in stride with your marketing strategies, a web designer is what you’re looking for. Web designers also help you improve the structure of your website and ensure it’s easy to navigate and uncluttered. 

On the other hand, if you need to add additional functions to your website, like a contact form or an in-site shopping function, hiring a developer is a good idea. Part of the web developer’s job is also increasing website loading times and responsiveness, as well as running ongoing maintenance. 

Interested in Becoming a Web Designer or Developer?

Aside from offering a completely different set of services to clients, the two jobs also offer differing professional experiences with contrasting opportunities, potential salaries and educational requirements. If you’re considering a career in the website field, it’s essential to consider all these factors before you decide to be a web developer or website designer. We’ll go over some of these factors below so you can make a more informed decision about the career path you choose.

Job Prospects for Web Designers vs. Web Developers

Web designers and developers both have promising job prospects in today’s digital landscape. Web designers focus on creating visually captivating websites, prioritizing user interfaces and experiences. On the other hand, web developers specialize in coding and programming the back-end functionalities of a website. The demand for both professions is high due to the continuous growth of the Internet and e-commerce. Front-end developers with expertise in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript are particularly sought after. Overall, the job prospects for both web designers and developers are projected to be favourable in the coming years.

Overview of Job Duties for Web Designers and Web Developers

Web designers specialise in using design software like Photoshop or Adobe Dreamweaver to create visually appealing websites. On the other hand, web developers write code in programming languages such as JavaScript, Python, or PHP to build the website itself. While web designers prioritise a website’s visual appearance and user experience (UX), web developers ensure its functionality and performance. There can be some overlap in job duties, with many web developers and designers having some of both skill sets. Collaboration with clients, project managers, and other team members is often necessary in web design and development projects. Web developers must have strong technical skills, whereas design skills are much more important for web designers.

Salary Expectations of Web Designers and Web Developers

This is potentially where website development and design differ the most: there is a notable gap in salary expectations. A survey found that Australia’s average web designer salary is $92,573 per year or $47.47 per hour in 2023, and entry-level positions start at $80,000. On the other hand, web developers earn a higher median salary at $105,479 per year on average or $54.09 per hour. Entry-level positions start at $91,977 annually.

It’s important to note that this is just one survey, and salaries vary greatly based on factors like experience, location, and employer. Most web developers and designers also find niches and have specialised skills that can bump up their salary.  For example, Full Stack Developers, who can build both the front and back end of a website or web application, earn a higher annual salary at $123,300 on average. Similarly, on average, web designers who specialise in UX make $115,000 annually. On the whole, although they differ, both professions offer competitive salaries with the opportunity to upskill for higher compensation. 

What Education Level Do Web Developers and Web Designers Need?

Employers highly value higher education when hiring either web designers or web developers, but the degrees to break into each profession differ. Most web designers often start by either studying visual or graphic design, digital media or website design on its own. On the other hand, web developers often have qualifications in computer science, software development or information technology.

It’s worth noting that not all successful website designers or developers have degrees, although it’ll help you get a leg up. It’s possible to break into the field and find success by self-teaching and showcasing skills through a portfolio. Regardless of your chosen path, continuous learning is essential to succeed in both professions to stay up-to-date with ever-evolving technologies and the latest web design trends.

The Potential Career Paths Web Development And Web Design Offer

Before jumping into either profession, it’s important to envision where you want your career to progress down the line and what the pathways are. Becoming a website designer allows you to progress to being a UX designer, visual designer, Chief Design Officer or even a creative director. Web developers can become front or back-end developers, lead developers, technical directors or Chief Technology Officers. 

Both web developers and designers can choose to work as a freelancer instead of joining a web design agency. Freelancing is ideal for people who value working independently, want a flexible work schedule or have the ability to work remotely. The downside of becoming a freelance developer or designer is that you always have to be on top of finding the next project to keep a steady flow of income.

Our Team of Web Designers and Web Developers

We hope this article has helped clarify the difference between web developers and web designers. Ultimately, web design and web development converge with a common goal: creating websites that are not only visually striking but function impeccably – catering to the needs of both the client and users. Whether you’re interested in becoming a web designer or a web developer or need to hire one, understanding the difference between them is important to make an informed decision and ensure you get the exact outcome you’re looking for.

If you need a new website, you should highly consider hiring both. This is the ethos we follow at Futuretheory: When a client approaches us for a new website, our team of experienced web designers and web developers collaborate to provide the client with a well-rounded, highly functional and well-designed website. 

In short, responsive web design is an approach to web design that means the site responds to the user and their environment, no matter what device or browser they’re using or how large their screen size/window size is. This is done by making the layout able to contract or expand depending on the user’s viewport (screen), creating an adaptive design that provides a better user experience (UX). If you want to learn more about responsive design, here’s a beginner’s guide. We’ll go over everything you need to know about responsive design, why it’s the way forward and the best way to create a modern, functional website, and some basic steps to create responsive websites and examples of responsive web design in practice. 

Why Responsive Design Matters

Having a responsive design for your website is crucial. It ensures that your website looks and functions at its best, regardless of the device people use to view it – be it a mobile device, tablet, or desktop computer. With over 55% of all internet traffic coming from mobile devices as of August 2023, optimising for multiple devices is more important than ever before. We live in a mobile-first world today, so while making your website responsive for desktops will always be necessary, you also have to consider the mobile version and different screen sizes during the website design process. This will help you avoid having a clunky and unattractive website with slow page loading times, which can drive away more than half of your website’s viewers. A survey conducted by HubSpot revealed that over 93% of people leave a website if it doesn’t display properly on their devices. As such, designers should never neglect the mobile version of their website.

Where Did The Concept of Responsive Web Design Originate?

Ethan Marcotte first introduced the concept of responsive web design in 2010 in an article for the design magazine A List Apart. Marcotte predicted the surge of mobile browsing and emphasised the need for web designers to adapt. He proposed that developers and designers move to create websites with one design that seamlessly responds to the user across all devices. 

The alternative is creating different designs for each device, otherwise known as adaptive design, resulting in a never-ending arms race to keep up with personal devices and mobile phone screens. Marcotte had complete conviction about the need for web designers to develop responsive design skills, stating in his seminal article: “This is our way forward. Rather than tailoring disconnected designs to each of an ever-increasing number of web devices, we can treat them as facets of the same experience.”

The Basic Principles of Responsive Web Design

Web designers can achieve a responsive website by strategically using flexible grids, layout elements, and adaptable images and media. Incorporating these elements in the web design process allows web pages to automatically adjust and rearrange their content to fit various window sizes. Doing this leads to smooth navigation, effortless interaction, and an enhanced user experience that increases user engagement and satisfaction. Web designers use HTML and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) frameworks like Bootstrap to create responsive websites. 

We’ll expand on the fundamentals of responsive web design below:

Fluid Grids

One of the key ways to make a design responsive is by using fluid grids. These grids allow content to resize and adjust based on columns. Essentially, fluid grids mean every element on the page occupies the same percentage of space, however large or small the screen becomes. The grid layout can also adapt based on breakpoints, allowing for a seamless and consistent user experience across different devices and screen sizes. By employing fluid grids, designers can create a flexible and adaptable interface.

Breakpoints

 In the CSS coding language, breakpoints are specific points in the range of screen widths that trigger changes in the design and layout of a website to adapt to various devices and screen sizes. Designers define these breakpoints as set pixel values in CSS. Once the website reaches these values, elements such as the grid and layout adjust to create a different CSS style to provide the best user experience possible. 

Designers can set breakpoints based on the screen resolution of different devices. Here is an example of the breakpoints a designer might set for their website, at which points the website will change:

• Small devices (e.g., smartphones): Below 600px
• Medium devices (e.g., tablets): 601px to 992px
• Large devices (e.g., desktops): 993px to 1200px
• Extra-large devices (e.g., large computer screens): Above 1201px

A design example of breakpoints in use would be a website that changes from multiple columns on a desktop layout to a single-column layout based on screen size at the 600 px breakpoint. You can also use breakpoints to shrink the sidebar to a simpler and smaller menu at specific screen sizes.

Flexible Images and Media

One of the most surefire ways to make your website more responsive is to ensure the images and media on your website are flexible. “Flexible” in this case means images and media should be dynamic and resized based on the width of the screen. This means responsive images always display in their original size unless the screen size is too narrow. If it is, the image’s width scales down with the size of the screen.

Using CSS, designers can ensure the maximum width of the image is set to 100 % of the screen or browser width. When the screen becomes too narrow, the image will scale its height and width without distorting or overflowing the layout. WordPress automatically implements this functionality for any images or media files uploaded.

Media Queries

Media queries are rules designers can set in CSS3 to ensure their website is both mobile responsive and desktop responsive. Media queries allow the layout, HTML blocks, font size, colours, and other design elements to change to accommodate the user. 

To work with media queries, designers must choose the breakpoints and rules they want to set. They can then apply the rules when certain conditions and breakpoints are met. These conditions might include viewport width, height, device orientation (landscape or portrait), or screen resolution. Designers can make their media queries even more specific, such as adjusting when the viewer uses a touch screen or mouse.

Here’s a simple example of how to use media queries: a designer might set a rule that reduces the text size when the user’s screen resolution is below 600px, the standard smartphone resolution.

Mobile-First Approach

Many proponents of responsive design use a mobile-first approach. This means they focus on the smallest screen sizes first and then progressively enhance the layout and features as the screen size increases instead of using the traditional method of designing for larger screens first and then scaling down. The idea is to ensure that the core functionality and basic layouts are, by default, optimised for mobile devices, meaning they never get left to the wayside. The mobile-first approach has its detractors, but it’s gaining popularity, considering mobile browsing now dominates.

Mobile-first design also ensures designers don’t add too many unnecessary elements to the website that would have to be axed for the mobile version.

Content Prioritisation

This leads us to our next concept: content prioritisation. If everything is emphasised, nothing stands out, especially on small screens. Not all content and features are equally important across devices, and smaller devices have limited screen real estate. A responsive website isn’t overloaded with features that only look good and function well on larger screens.

While having multiple columns and a wealth of informative content on your landing page might be great for desktop, it can look messy on mobile versions. This can cause essential information to be pushed down to the bottom of the page, forcing users to scroll endlessly. That’s why content prioritisation is critical. It involves identifying important content and ensuring it’s easily accessible and prominent, even on smaller screens, while less vital content is hidden or reorganised.

From A Design Concept to a Key Strategy

Mobile browsing has become even more popular than Marcotte could have possibly predicted in 2010, now accounting for the majority of all browsing. As a result, responsive design has gone from a concept to an essential strategy you need to implement if you want your website to be successful and have a good user experience. We hope this article helped set you on the right path to creating a responsive website that functions beautifully, no matter the device. If you need a bit more guidance, check out our article on the more broad fundamentals of web design.

Good web design involves many important elements that may not be immediately obvious. During the design process, our team of Canberra web designers puts a lot of thought and work into everything from usability to typography. While creating a visually appealing website is important, the key principles of website design extend far beyond aesthetics. In this article, we’ll go over some of the core principles of good website design and the best practices every web designer should incorporate. If, while reading, you realise your current website is lacking some of these important principles, it might be time for a website redesign to make sure you’re following the design best practices.

Ensuring Your Site Design is Easy And Functional To Use

Having a website that’s clunky on mobile, slow to load and difficult to navigate is the easiest way to put off a visitor. Simplicity and ease of use should always be at the forefront of your mind while you design your website. It’s easy to get caught up in the visual aspects and forget that the visitor is looking to quickly complete a certain action or find a piece of information. Great design should go hand in hand with ease of use, accessibility, and functionality:

Ease of Use

Website visitors browse at a fast pace, so this means your website should be easy to use and navigate if you want to keep their attention. The key to achieving this is by prioritizing good user experience (UX) in the design and layout of your site. UX is all about crafting a website that caters to the needs of your visitors, ensuring that they can quickly find the information they need and complete their desired actions without hassle. 
To achieve a great UX design, it’s essential to have a well-structured website with a simple navigation bar and drop-down menu that allows users to easily navigate between different pages. 

Moreover, it’s important to ensure that all the essential information is prominently displayed on your website, such as the services or products your business offers, pricing, and contact information. This means you should arrange the different website elements in order of importance. This is also known as responsive design. Your home page should also be clean, uncluttered, and visually appealing, with clear text that conveys the message of your brand or business. By doing so, you’ll help your visitors find what they’re looking for quickly and efficiently.

All in all, a well-designed website that prioritizes user experience is key to ensuring that visitors stay on your site for longer and are more likely to engage with your brand or business. So, take the time to create a user-friendly website that meets the needs of your audience, and you’ll reap the rewards in the long run.

Accessibility 

Accessibility means your website functions seamlessly across different devices like phones and tablets. These days, mobile browsing is king:  more than half (56.96%) of all website traffic comes from mobile devices as of May 2023.  If your mobile website isn’t optimised, you risk alienating over half of your potential traffic. To further the point that a good mobile web design is crucial, HubSpot found that 93% of people they surveyed have clicked off a website because it didn’t properly display on their device. Your website’s design should be able to adapt dynamically to different screen sizes, and the layout should work seamlessly on any device and load quickly. Essentially, whether it’s an iPhone or an extra large monitor, your website needs to have the same level of visual appeal and functionality. 

 By taking the time throughout the design process to ensure your website theme is optimised for mobile devices and tablets, you can create a seamless user experience that will help your website gain the traction and success you’re looking for. In short, having a website that’s accessible across all devices is an essential part of modern web design. 

Functionality

Functionality: one of the most important principles of effective web design and the key to making a pleasing website. The name says it all: your website, and all the features on it, should function smoothly.  Having a website that’s consistent and reliable strengthens your online presence, reflects well on your business and can also help increase profits – especially if you have an in-site shopping function or booking and contact forms. If these don’t function as they should, it will result in a drop in conversion. 

Functionality also involves making sure your website loads as quickly as possible. According to a study by Kissmetrics, 40% of individuals tend to abandon a website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. Moreover, the same study indicates that even a mere 1-second delay in page response can lead to a 7% drop in conversions. This is why functionality and loading times are key to a good website design.

Effective Visual Design Choices

Good visual design for a website, as we explained above, is multifaceted. Aside from just being aesthetically pleasing, good visual design on your site will also play into user psychology to drive the goals of the website. Visual design plays a large role in shaping visitors’ perceptions of your brand, how much they engage with your website, and their overall user experience. Your website should have a clean, professional, and visually appealing layout that creates a positive first impression and encourages users to stay and explore further. 

Consistent Design Choices and Branding

Consistency is one of the fundamental principles of effective website design. An all-over-the-place colour scheme can make your website design look haphazard and unprofessional. The same applies to any of the design elements on your website design.  Here are some design guidelines to help you stay consistent:

• Only use a handful of fonts across your website, and be deliberate in your use of them. This is one of the easiest ways to ensure your website feels cohesive.
• Pick completely contrasting or complimentary colour schemes and stick to them throughout your website. 
• Keep layout spacing and padding consistent throughout all your pages. This means your menus, search bar, and images should be in the same position on each page.

Sticking to your design choices throughout the design process is a simple way to make your website look and feel cohesive and well-thought-out, therefore increasing your brand’s credibility in the eyes of anyone who visits it.

Clear Navigation

One of the most basic web design principles is having a straightforward website navigation menu. Typically, the navigation menu is located on the sidebar or page header and contains internal links. It allows people to move between different pages on your site. Considering the limited patience of internet users, creating a well-designed navigation menu is crucial. It helps visitors find what they are looking for quickly and easily, preventing them from getting frustrated and leaving your site.

A visually appealing navigation menu is important, but its ease and efficiency of use should be prioritised. Keeping the design as simple as possible is the best approach; avoid overloading your drop-down menu with too many options under each header category. Additionally, limit the number of header categories to a maximum of 5.

Visual Hierarchy 

In web design, visual hierarchy refers to the way elements are arranged and presented on a web page to guide the user’s attention to the most important information first. This makes it easier for users to quickly grasp the content and structure of the page and find the information they need. Visual hierarchy is achieved through design techniques such as size, colour, contrast, alignment, and positioning, which all work together to improve the usability of your website.

To summarise, good web design should be appealing, user-friendly, and functional. User experience matters, so provide essential information intuitively and have a responsive interface across devices. Consistency and a clear navigation menu foster credibility and exploration. Following these principles should set you on the right track to creating a website design that represents your business in the best way possible and avoid some of the most common mistakes in web design. If you need further guidance, you can read more about website design here.

1. Homepage

Your website’s homepage will be the most visited page of your website. This is often where a visitor will land from search engines or if they type in your URL directly. Therefore, your homepage will likely be the first impression a potential client gets of your business.

Users will only stay on this page for a few seconds before moving to the next page (if your website has the right call to action or user flow set up). Or, they may only stay on your home page before exiting back to search results if they can’t easily find the information they need. Users want to be able to navigate your website easily.

Use your website to entice users to stay and explore. Headings should be easy to read and eye-catching. Icons should be subtle, so they don’t compete with the headings. You need a call to action (CTA) such as “see our services”, “book a consultation”, or “sign up to our newsletter” in a primary place on your homepage. The aim of this is to capture visitors’ attention before they exit to Google (or any other search engine!).

Your homepage should give a high-level snapshot of what is included in your website. As you scroll down the page, you should touch on most pages including your products, services, testimonials, partners and contact information. Try to look at your website from the visitor perspective – from navigation bars to images and copy. Present the information in a way that the visitor will understand and be able to follow.

You can use a tool such as Attention Insight to see how your homepage might perform with visitors. Attention Insight is a tool that uses AI to develop a heatmap based on thousands of pieces of user data.

2. Services page or product page

Your services or product page is the second most important page after your homepage. This is where visitors will be able to explore your core market offering – whether it’s a service they can book or a product they can purchase (online or offline).

Use this page to detail your services or list important information about your product. Begin with a summary or your main point of difference. After this, go into some of the more intricate benefits.

Dedicating a page to your services or products allows you to break it down in a clear and easy to digest way. This is also the place to show how you differ from competitors. Ensure to include a synopsis of services or a range of products, bullet points of the service or benefits of the product, videos and product images, and a call to action for more information, where to book or how to buy.

3. About page

Your about page is where you should show the core values of your business – who you are and what you stand for. Visitors will go to your about page when they want to know more about your company – and people are becoming increasingly more conscious of what companies they’re buying from.

Use this page to talk about exactly what you do. What can you offer your clients or customers that no one else can? What do you stand for in the world? What is important to you as a company? These are some of the questions visitors will be searching for on your about page.

Your about page is also a great place to let your personality shine through – whether you’re a fun cheeky brand, or a serious and exclusive brand, or something else entirely. This is where to show it off. Tell a story about the inception of your company – storytelling is one of the best ways to engage customers with your brand. You could even include a video from a director or key person in the company for a more personal touch.

4. Contact page

Your contact page is a very important page for your website – you can sell a visitor a service but if they can’t contact you, all that effort has gone to waste!

Visitors want to know how they can reach you, so make it easy for them on your contact page – they don’t want to search hard for it. Put all the necessary details above the fold and additional information (such as an interactive map) below the fold if necessary.

Don’t miss the opportunity to use a CTA such as “call us now”, “send us an enquiry” or similar. This adds that extra push for customers to complete the action, and makes it easy for them.

5. Blog page

A website that isn’t optimised for SEO is a website that won’t be seen. Search engines reward websites that look active and appear to be giving valuable information. The best and cheapest way to do this is by writing blogs.

Writing blogs on a consistent basis, that are related to your business area, will show Google and other search engines that you’re an authority figure on that topic. If search engines recognise that you’re an authority, they will reward you by showing your website higher in search results, increasing organic reach.

Additionally, a blog page will show visitors that you are an expert in the field. Once you build up a library of website content in your specific field, visitors will be able to read through and understand your products or services better. This will build trust with visitors that your company is the best choice.

These blogs are also great for sharing on social media. Blogs are great for SEO and they’re great for organic content to share with followers. Make sure to write engaging, interesting content that your followers would be interested to click on and read. This will bring more traffic to your website.

6. 404 Page

The ‘Not found’ page, or Error 404 page is the one of the essential website pages on this list, but for a different reason to all the other pages. While the other pages are important from a website content point of view, and contain pages of information that every visitor should be able to find out, the 404 Page is important in a more practical way.

What is the 404 page? The 404 page or ‘Not found’ page is shown to someone when an asset they are looking, like a page or an image, no longer exists in the location the link is taking them to. It is a way to inform a visitor of this.

Essential website pages

Every website should have these six pages we’ve explored above. These pages are critical in communicating your business or product to potential buyers or clients. However, these aren’t the only pages your website should have – there are plenty more pages that will be beneficial to have and will be specific to your industry or even business.

When looking at these pages, it is also important to think about SEO and website hosting – in fact, there’s a link between to these factors as well as we covered in this article.

Take a look at many fast food restaurants and you’ll find they use red and yellow, as these colours encourage hunger while being friendly. In contrast, a restaurant like Subway chooses to use green and yellow instead of red to communicate and support their “eat fresh” tagline.

While there are some tried and true associations with every colour, things such as cultural differences can change a colour’s meaning drastically. For example, red in many western countries means passion or danger. In some eastern countries, red is a lucky colour. These two associations are very different and can change how your brand appears, depending on your audience and the context your business is in.

If you’re in the process of refreshing your website, or you’re creating your first website, one of the most important decisions will be the colours you use throughout the website for headings, links, design elements and more.

Why is colour so important in website design?

Colour selection can significantly impact a company’s bottom line – particularly if that company is mostly online. 85% of people claim that colour has a major influence on what they buy – so if you choose the wrong colour for your audience, you could be harming potential business.

You can test how colour impacts your bottom line by changing something as simple as your website button colours. When some companies experimented with button colours, they noticed a sharp increase or decrease in conversions. Beamax, a company from The Netherlands that make projector screens, saw a massive 53.1% increase in clicks on links that were red vs links that were blue. Choosing the right colour goes beyond website clicks too. A study on the mental impact of colours discovered that colours boosted brand recognition by an average of 80%. You can see this in practice when you think of a brand such as Coca Cola and their iconic red beverages.

So, colour is very important beyond what looks good. The right (or wrong) colour can have a big impact on your website visitors and conversions.

What is colour theory?

Colour theory is a set of fundamental principles that guide you in creating colour combinations that work together. It is important to understand these basic principles in the process of creating effective colour palettes for your website (or brand). Here are a few of the fundamentals in colour theory:

The Colour Wheel

The colour wheel is a great place to start when exploring colours. Most of us will have seen a colour wheel in some variation or another (such as in art class at school), and you may recall that there are primary, secondary and tertiary colours:

Primary Colours

The primary colours are red, yellow, and blue. If you combine any two of these colours, you create secondary colours.

Secondary Colours

Secondary colours are purple (formed by mixing red and blue), green (formed by mixing blue and yellow) and orange (formed by mixing red and yellow).

Tertiary Colours

Tertiary colours are combinations of primary and secondary colours, such as red and purple, yellow and orange, or blue and green.

Tints, shades and tones

Primary, secondary and tertiary colours are traditionally considered “pure” colours. They are bright, vivid and full of colour. If you add white to a pure colour, this creates a tint. It creates a lighter, less intense colour than the pure colour. If you add black to a pure colour, this creates a shade. And, if you mix white and black to a pure colour, this creates tones. Tones are more subdued than pure colours.

Contrast

Contrast is highly important in website design and when choosing colours for a brand. The higher the contrast, the easier that two colours can appear different from one another – such as a bright colour paired with a dark colour.

While it is important to consider the contrast of the colours, it’s also important to evaluate the contrast of their tone. Two different colours with an even tone will not have high contrast. An easy way to decide if two colours have good contrast is to convert them to greyscale – this will make the contrast much clearer.

In most instances, you want to find two (or more) colours with high contrast for website design, as this makes it easier to read and easier to locate buttons or actions. White text on a black background is the most obvious choice. However, there is a careful balancing act, as too much contrast can tire the viewer’s eyes (also referred to as eye strain or eye fatigue). The best places to use contrast are between text and background and between buttons and the background. Use less contrast between background sections or between the menu and background, if you are using too much contrast already.

What is colour psychology?

Colour psychology is a step beyond colour theory. Colour psychology is the science of how colours affect human behaviour and the subconscious associations people have with colours. This means, the choice of colour for your brand, product or website can impact how a person feels about it – they may become energised, calmed, angered or otherwise depending on the colour you choose.

Unfortunately, not every person responds to colours in the exact same way, and it can be somewhat of a subjective topic. Colour associations can change across the industry you’re working in, the culture you’re selling to, people’s personal beliefs, and different genders and their individual preferences. This means there are no guarantees about its effect on conversion and branding. Subsequently, this is why understanding your audience is so important. Despite this, there are some common associations with colours that have been proven more frequently than not.

Colour evokes emotion

Blue is the most popular colour in the world. People are drawn to particular colours because those colours bring out emotions. In the same vein, colours can also cause a negative reaction. And, these reactions can change depending on the context. In some contexts, red may cause a person to feel fear or anxiety, while in another it could communicate passion and excitement.

Colours used in website design need to be woven together seamlessly with other elements on the page, such as typography, imagery and copy. Be careful using particular colours depending on your product, service or industry. Colours may communicate different things.

Colour meanings

There are some common meanings associated with colours in most circumstances. Use these as a guide only, as depending on the context, these colours may have different meanings.

Red

Vibrant and aggressive, red can convey opposing ideas depending on the context. A deep red paired with black will give you a masculine, aggressive feel, while red paired with white or gold speaks to love and passion. Red often represents danger such as stop signs and blood.

Represents: Passion, power, love, danger, excitement

Blue

Blue is the most popular colour choice for brands, with around 40% of brands using blue as their primary brand colour. Blue evokes feelings of calm and peace. It’s also a trustworthy and reliable colour. Blue may also make your brand appear logical.

Represents: Calm, trust, peace, logic, reliable

Green

Green is a colour often used for healthy and natural products (or products that want to appear healthy and natural). Often, green can be used for wealth, abundance and prosperity due to its association with money.

Represents: health, nature, abundance, prosperity.

Yellow

Often associated with the sun, yellow is a warm colour that reminds people of summer. Yellow is the most visible colour on the spectrum. Yellow communicates happiness, optimism and friendliness. It can also be associated with creativity. Careful using yellow with colours like black, as these colours are often used together in construction and safety.

Represents: Happiness, optimism, creativity, friendliness.

Orange

Less aggressive than red but stronger than yellow, orange is often used in construction, safety and safety equipment. Orange can sometimes be associated with autumn due to the orange leaves. Orange can evoke a fun and energetic atmosphere.

Represents: fun, freedom, warmth, comfort, playfulness.

Purple

Purple is a colour used by brands that want to appear sophisticated and rich. Purple is a luxurious colour because of its long, traditional associations with royalty. It is also a mysterious colour because it can be dark and moody.

Represents: luxury, sophistication, loyalty, mystery.

Pink

Pink is a colour often used when marketing towards females and younger generations – such as ‘millennial pink’. Pink is a nurturing and gentle colour. It can also be sincere and warm. Hot pinks (moving toward red) can be energetic and exciting.

Represents: nurturing, gentle, sincere, warm.

Brown

Brown is not a frequently used colour. Brown can be associated with nature, in tandem with a colour like green. Brown is often used for security, protection and support services.

Represents: nature, security, protection, support

Black

Black is a bold colour. It can be associated with power and control. However, it can also be connected t elegance and sophistication. On the negative side, black can be linked to depression (as can blue).

Represents: elegance, power, control, sophistication, depression.

White

White is the colour of purity and cleanliness. It’s a bright, minimal and simple colour. White can also be associated with clarity.

Represents: purity, peace, clarity, cleanliness.

What are the best colour palettes?

A colour palette is a combination of colours that are used together and usually guide the design of a website, brand, publication or other. There are five main types of colour palettes: analogous, monochromatic, triad, complementary, and split complementary. Any of these palettes can be used to create an effective colour scheme.

Analogous

This type of colour palette uses colours that sit next to each other on the colour wheel. This can look great because the colours fit together nicely, but it can also be too subtle – which may be detrimental on a website.‍

Monochromatic

Monochromatic colour palettes use a single colour with various shades and tints of that same colour. This can be visually pleasing but can also miss the contrast needed for something like website design.

Triad

As the name suggests, triad colour palettes consist of three colours that are evenly spaced apart n the colour wheel. This can be risky in website design as it can appear noisy – but this may be ideal for some businesses who are looking to create a youthful, playful and artistic website.

Complementary

Complementary colour palettes contain colours that are on opposite sides of the colour wheel. This is effective for web design because they create visual balance. However, the colours need to be used at a 70:30 ratio, rather than 50:50 because otherwise, you will lose hierarchy. A complementary colour palette can be used to select a primary brand colour and a supporting, accent colour.

Split Complementary

Split complementary colour palettes are similar to complementary colour palettes but introduce a third colour that is near one other colour on the wheel. This is a great alternative to the complementary colour palette if you need more than 2 colours.‍

How do you use colour in website design

There are lots of free online tools that can help you create a colour palette for your brand or website. If you use the Adobe suite, take a look at Adobe colour, where you can pick colours on the colour wheel to create your own palette. A good place to start is to choose three colours – a main colour, a supporting colour and an accent colour. Use these colours on your website with the 60/30/10 rule – which is 60% your main colour, 30% your supporting colour and 10% your accent colour.

What colours are trending right now?

Although any colour can be used in website design, there are some trending colours being used on websites right now. These change frequently though and it’s often best to avoid relying on a trending colour.

1. Really bright, high contrast colours

Think bright oranges, warm pinks and bold yellows. Many websites will use bright, fun colours to stand out. This may be in reaction to a globally tough 2020/2021 with lockdowns and restrictions – brands are looking to bring back warmth and fun.

2. Natural tones

Many brands are leaning into soft browns, pale greys and off-whites. This is to bring back a ‘human’ element to a brand.

3. Analogous palettes

This year, people are looking for balance and harmony. You’ll see lots of designs that use one colour and rely on tints and shades to create contrast.

4. Soothing colours

Brands are leaning into colours that will calm and soothe their audience. This is often in the form of a deep, strong colour paired with soft pastel.

5. Pantone’s colour of 2021

Every year, Pantone selected a colour that represents the world at that time. This year, the 2021 Pantone colour of the year was actually two colours: Illuminating Yellow and Ultimate Gray.

What is SEO?

SEO (or search engine optimisation) is the process of improving a page or a website so it will appear higher in search engine results, such as Google. This means your product or service will see more visitors and likely increase sales or bookings. Search engines such as Google and Bing use bots to crawl through pages on your website and identify what your website is about. It uses this information to show your website in related keyword searches.

With so many websites in existence, Google, Bing and other search engines have the challenge of choosing which websites are most relevant to the user’s search. This is where key metrics come into play. Search engines will analyse website metrics (such as bounce rate and load time) to rank competing websites for the user.

What are the SEO techniques that we need to follow while designing a website?

Navigation and website structure

Your navigation structure and overall website structure can impact many important search engine metrics, including average time on page, bounce rate, engagement rate and conversion rate. If users are unable to find information on your website or have difficulty navigating through your website, it is likely that they will leave your page and go elsewhere. This causes your average time on page and bounce rate to increase, negatively impacting your SEO.

How can you create a good structure?

• Keep your menu system simple. Reduce the number of items on your menu to make it easier for the user to make a decision.
• Don’t use complex or technical jargon in your menu – instead, use terms that will be easily understood by the user.
• Your menu should be consistent on every page of your website. This means your menu shouldn’t change between pages and shouldn’t move locations either.
• Make sure your URL for every page follows the same structure and that it is clear, concise and descriptive. The user should be able to guess what page they are on from the URL alone. This means not using URLs such as futuretheory.co/fth124-usr-43/tarjf4902, and instead using a URL such as futuretheory.co/canberra-web-design-how-to-build-a-website/.

404 page

Often, users will quit a website if they encounter a 404 error page or message because they have hit a dead-end from a broken link or a page that does not exist anymore. This can be harmful to your bounce rate and other key metrics. It is important to reduce the likelihood of encountering a 404 page, however, there is a great opportunity to design an engaging 404 page that will keep users on your website in the event they do reach it.

Design a custom 404 page. Think creatively about how to grab the users attention and redirect them back to the home page or an equally useful ‘restart’ point. This can be done with photographs, images or creative copywriting. To redirect the user, consider including a search bar or a list of common pages to get them back on track.

Loading speed

The speed at which your website loads is an important search engine ranking factor.

There are a few factors that can impact your loading speed. Here are some things you can do to reduce your loading time:

• Minimise your CSS and JavaScript usage
• Use compressed images and files
• Use a content delivery network (CDN) if possible
• Minimise the use of redirects
• Use caching for repeat users
• Find a web host near your audience

Images, image size and alternate text

Almost every website you visit will use images – while some may only use a few, some designs will rely heavily on images and photographs. Relevant and interesting images can help increase the average time-on-page and engagement rate, while also making it easier for the user to understand what they’re reading about or searching through.

Unfortunately, using lots of images can slow down your loading time. And, if a user has a slower internet connection, there is a risk that your images will not load at all. When uploading images to your website consider the following:

• Add titles to images (where appropriate) and make sure they use relevant keywords
• Add alternate (alt) text to each image that is descriptive and keyword-rich. Alt text is used when an image fails to load, or when a user is viewing your website with accessibility features.
• Compress your images before uploading to reduce how many megabytes/gigabytes a server needs to load. This will not reduce the visible quality of the images but will increase load time significantly (vs uncompressed images).

Pop-ups

Pop-ups can be harmful to search engine results. In many websites, pop-ups appear as soon as the user lands on the site, which is bad for a few reasons. First, you make it difficult for the user to get to the information they expect to see. This adds another click for the user to close the pop-up. Second, the user may be deterred by the pop up immediately, and they could quit back to the search results, impacting your bounce rate. Even if the information below the pop-up is perfectly written, with the right keywords and all the information the user needed, Google may view this increased bounce rate negatively and assume the information on the page is not relevant to the keywords you’re showing up in.

If you desperately need to use a pop-up, try a non-invasive pop-up or an exit-intent pop up that only appears when the user is about to depart the website.

Responsive design

Modern phones, laptops and PCs have screens of all sizes. Your website needs display correctly on as many of those devices as possible. This is where responsive design is important. Responsive design uses one design, which adjusts particular elements depending on the screen size. For example, the menu system may change to a hamburger menu on a mobile or a small screen while it will show the full menu on a desktop computer. Google rewards mobile-friendly, responsive sites. You can test how friendly your site is with this tool: https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly

Website design affects SEO

There are various factors of website design that do impact how your website appears in search engines. Search engines such as Google take into account things like navigation and website structure, having a good 404 page, loading speed, images, images size and alternate text, pop-ups, responsive design and lots more. The more effective your website is at guiding a visitor and providing the right information in an easy way, the higher up your website will show in search engines such as Google.

If you’re after our Canberra web design services, get in touch and we’d be happy to help.

These similarities exist because web designers are increasingly understanding the way users interact with websites. WordPress is one of the most popular website design platforms due to its ease of use and template availability. This also means there are many websites who begin their design process with the same template, so the similarities between websites are hard to miss.

Despite these similarities, when we take a closer look under the ‘hood’ of a website, it becomes clear that every website is different. These differences include unique calls-to-action, a visitor’s journey on the website, use of images, addition or removal of different pages, the formal or informal use of language and overall business goals of a website.

There are surface-level similarities between websites and there are unique elements deeper down. So, back to the question – are all websites the same? To which the simple answer is no.

When working on a website you will come across some small and big decisions that will frame your website’s layout and functionality. These decisions are what make your website unique while still following some basic principles.

Websites are a reflection of your brand

Your brand has a unique story, so the elements of your website and how a use interacts with them will be inherently different from your competitors. In other words, no two websites can be the same because they are unique to your brand.

To design a website that stands out, it is important to understand your business and its brand elements. Communicating compelling stories of your brand helps customers align with your offerings. Why does your business exist and what is your backstory?

Websites are designed to meet your business objectives

Every website serves a different purpose to different businesses – where one website is a fully-fledged e-commerce platform, another is used to share free knowledge and information.

A website layout is designed with core objectives in mind, such as increasing sales, improving website traffic or generating more enquiries. The layout and content structure is strategically adapted to bring your brand closer to meeting the objective.

Websites are as much about your customers as your business

In most cases, a business’ website is the first point of contact for customers and every business has a unique customer profile. So, it is important to think of websites from the perspective of your audience. Customers are looking for answers – how can this brand solve my problem easily?

Your target audience is looking for specific information and they want this information with less effort. Your website layout should be designed to provide all your brand information in a way that is best understood by customers, compared to your competitors. Web developers and designers study a customer’s interaction with your website to best design the information hierarchy.

Websites are an ongoing process

To keep your website interesting, modern and unique, it requires regular updating. Tracking visitors’ interaction with your website and gathering analytics on your website’s performance helps keep your website relevant to the changing demands in the market.

A high-performing websites is continually optimised. They track a visitor’s interaction on the internet and deliver personalised experiences that better suit the specific user’s needs, reducing bounce rates and encouraging customers to come back for more. So, websites become unique and offer meaningful differentiation to the user.

No two websites are exactly the same. A website reflects your brand, your personal story, your unique target customers and an ever-changing business landscape. It’s these variations that interact with purpose to produce a unique website.

Do you agree? Let’s talk about it – comment below!