From my experience in working with businesses it is essential for a successful company to have a good website that stands out from the crowd. So here are my ten top tips to help you with your website design…

1. Plan your site. Wireframe diagrams are a great way to clearly layout your website. (And to explain your site to other people). By having a fair idea of what your site will contain and planning it all out before you start will save you time in the long run.

2. Keep it simple. When a website has too much imagery, text, fonts, links and colours it can hurt the viewers eyes. (I’ve seen too many sites with yellow Comic Sans font on black backgrounds!) By keeping simple and not being afraid of using ‘white space’, visitors will be more attracted to your site and stay longer.

3. Keep it consistent. Follow through the site using the same colours, fonts and alignments. Also, your company logo should always be top left, so each page should look like it?s from the same website.

4. On brand. Be sure that the design of the site is consistent with the company’s brand message, tone of voice and style.

5. Clear navigation. Don’t lose your visitors with hidden navigational buttons, they should be found easily and in the same location on all pages of your website (I tend to design them at the top or top left of the page as with the logo).

6. Contact information. Give your visitors all the options to contact you. Some prefer to telephone or email, others prefer to fill out an enquiry form. But be sure they can quickly find this information. (I usually have this at the top of the page)

7. Updating. Regularly updating your company?s website not only shows that your company is still trading and dedicated to keeping up to date, but also helps in your search engine rankings.

8. Pay attention to the detail. Even a spellchecker can be wrong! Make sure your content is correctly spelt and without any errors. Ask a friend to check for you (And please make sure you have permission to use the images you found on the internet!)

9. Website loading speed. A visitor will have no patience when it comes to waiting for a website to load. If it’s loading for more than 10 seconds, they’ve gone elsewhere…

10. Test it out. Before you go live, try it out. A simple way to do this is show it to a friend who is not involved, let them test it and ask for their feedback

Following these simple tips, your website will be on course in attracting more visitors.