The design of your website includes its color, layout, and appearance. Website developers coordinate with graphic designers to create web layouts, visual imagery, and user interface. The more visually appealing, the better the first impression.

The functionality of the website is defined as the ‘usefulness of website design’. This decides whether or not your design works for your customers. When the design is highly functional, it helps meet your customer’s goals and needs.

If you are a business owner looking to design your website for great functionality, here are some useful tips.

1.    Highlight your mission statement

Your mission statement is your headline or tagline, generally with your company logo. When choosing your mission statement, you must decide on a smart statement that says more about what and how you do what you’re doing.

Include social proof and information that makes your website content convincing. When you tell your audience about your work, collect written or video testimonials from famous clients. Make smart use of your valuable testimonials on your website.

2.   Choose a minimalistic and clutter-free layout

Choosing a plain white background works wonders for your design. A simple design makes

your website looks clean, it also helps with easy navigation.

Separate information into correct sections, for instance, team pages, homepage, about section, services page, contact us, etc. The requirements for various sections and the information included in each will differ from business to business.

Consider using carousels on your website only if needed, not every website requires them. Research has shown that carousels of 3 work best as opposed to 5 or more.

3.    Make your audience want to read your content

The greatest advice every content writer gives is to include the most important message at the top. Readers glance at the website. The colors, design, and layout decide whether they stay but the most important part – is the content. What are they getting from you?

For the written content on the website – the font, spacing, color, and size of written content are vital aspects of the whole layout. Do not clump information together, spread it out and make it easy to read. Select the appropriate tone and voice, your audience builds an image of your brand based on the type of tone and voice you use.

Separate each piece of information into organized sections. A standard website will have:

  • Homepage
  • About page
  • Services page
  • Products page
  • FAQ page
  • Testimonials
  • Contact Us
  • Blog
  • News
  • Privacy
  • Terms and conditions
  • Sitemap

Adding a ‘thank you page’ is a good way to increase engagement. Here you can request your audience to follow you on social media, download an eBook or newsletter, give them a coupon code, add a video, etc.

4.    Optimize speed and ease of navigation

If you have a fantastic design but your website is slow to load, it would be a major setback. Your website should load fast and should be user and mobile-friendly.

Internal linking is important to keep users on your website for longer. Again, this helps in engagement and increases website ranking. Note that the homepage must have a link to the service page, so users get what they are looking for.

5.    Utilize an attractive call to action(s)

The most important part of your design functionality is the ‘call to action’ also abbreviated as CTA. This is what you use to ask your customers to take action. Using verbs instead of plain words is the key. For example, ‘talk to us’ is an excellent call to action as opposed to ‘more about the product’.

The call to action should be clearly visible, short, and understandable. Some useful tips to create good CTA’s:

  • Colors for the CTA buttons should be bright, and noticeable and should go well with the color layout of your website. Consider using complementary colors. (Example: For a website layout of red use a green CTA button color.)
  • Use the 1st person instead of the 3rd person. (Example: I would like to or I would want)
  • Test your CTA’s. (Example: The WYLTIWLT test, or ‘Would you like to? / I would like to’ test)

Concluding points

The secret to a fully functional, 5-star website design lies in its

  • Value – your mission statement or tagline
  • Simplicity – minimalist design, neat arrangement, the right content, and colors
  • Offer – products and services you offer
  • Ease of use – the ease, and speed of browsing through your website while getting the right information
  • CTAs – clarity about what action you want your customers to take

You must test the functionality of your website design to make sure it is a well-optimized design. To test 2 or more variations of designs, use the A/B (bucket or split) testing. You can then confidently use the best functional design for your business website.

Need help with your website design and development? Contact us today for a free consultation.

Valux Digital is a nationally recognized digital marketing & PR agency in New York. Businesses and projects of all shapes and sizes are welcome here. We have extensive experience in both B2B and B2C marketing.  We specialize in building out customized marketing packages that take real data into account. See some of our other articles on Forbes or Entrepreneur.