How to Design a Website on WordPress Like a Pro?
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Beyond aesthetics, learning how to create a professional website is important. However, a Stanford study on web credibility found that 75% of customers base their opinions of a company’s trustworthiness on the way its website is designed.
This implies that your site’s layout should be just as carefully thought out as its content. In order to create a trustworthy and professional-looking website, you must take into account the theme, font selection, and other factors. Visitors will probably leave your website quickly if it has poor color schemes, has an excessive amount of text, or otherwise appears amateurish.
In this article, we’ll go through what makes a website appear professional and discuss typical errors. Then, in order to draw in and impress your visitors, we’ll go over how to make a WordPress site look professional.
Let’s examine these stages in more detail below.
Let’s discuss what factors contribute to a website looking professional before getting into the details of building a polished site with WordPress. Anyone can learn how to create a website thanks to the numerous site builders and online resources available.
However, creating a professional website without design or computer experience is difficult. This is partially due to how much information can fit on business websites in a limited amount of space.
Whether you’re creating a professional site for a solo venture or an established business, your website may include:
- Marketing promotions
- Ecommerce
- Community boards for engagement
- Content like blogs or product photos
- Landing pages
- Calls-to-action
- Branding
- Interactive quizzes
- Email opt-ins
If you don’t have much design experience, organizing and displaying so much data can be challenging.
Next, your audience is on your mind with each move you make. After all, if no one visits your website, it won’t benefit your business. Additionally, you are aware that drawing in random visitors is insufficient; your website must captivate your intended audience. Typically, this entails creating buyer personas and then making some educated assumptions.
Generally speaking, the term “professional” means “related to or belonging to a profession.” As a result, your website needs to draw in visitors who are familiar with your sector and the goods you offer.
A professional website must also have a visually appealing design. Some people enjoy thinking about things like color, typefaces, and photography. But for some people, it could be irritating, perplexing, or aggravating.
You’re not the only one if you fall into that category. When you search “fear of creativity” on Google, there are over 293 million results. But you can get over your fear and make a polished, expert website. A professional website will have some of the following characteristics:
1. Create a clear brand identity.
A great brand inspires trust, is easy to remember, and can evolve as your company does. The best brands in the world are also unique, relevant, and innovative.
That sounds simple, but how do you create a brand that does all that?
You can look to competitors for inspiration, but you might end up copying their look. You could work with a professional to build your brand. Or, you can go it on your own.
Whichever you choose, designing your website is easy once you have a clear brand identity. This is because your brand includes your chosen:
- Colors
- Typography
- Logo
- Sample photographs
It’s smart to pull together your professional brand identity with a brand guide. Your brand guide should also include the voice of your copy and other instructions for promoting your brand. This way, as your team changes and updates your site, your branding will stay consistent.
2. Make your site easy to use and read.
Another quality of a professional website is its ease of use. Most websites are a combination of text, images, and videos. And a website is for your users. You want them to be able to get what they need from your site whenever and wherever they need to.
Start with readability. Your users might have all the time in the world to search every tab and read every bit of text on your site. But it’s more likely that they’re moving between tabs and quickly searching your site for answers.
To get your site visitors to engage, click, and convert, make it simple to navigate your site. To create a usable site, remember to:
- Keep menus short
- Make buttons stand out on the page
- Focus your page layout on what’s most important
- Be thoughtful as you add animations or popups
Also, try to use the most common words for menu items. For example, use “About” instead of “The story of our brand.”
Next, make your copy easy to scan. Some simple ways to do this include:
- Use large and clear fonts
- Add white space to give text visual room to breathe
- Use headers, sub-heads, and bullets to break up chunks of copy
3. Design a site that works on any screen.
Your audience might scan your site on a desktop computer in a well-lit room. But it’s just as likely that they’re scanning a laptop in a dark room while watching TV or scrolling on their mobile phone at a busy cafe`.
It’s important to create a responsive web design that can flex and adjust to any screen resolution, size, or orientation. This sounds like a lot of work. But if you want to keep up with the pace of technology, you want to design a site that can evolve with the tech your audience uses.
Responsive web design takes careful planning. It’s not just about the structure of your site. For example, you’ll need to take photographs that can work vertically or horizontally. And images need to be high quality enough to look crisp on monitors big and small, but at a size that keeps your site speedy.
4. Use quality images.
Because many businesses have a tight budget, images aren’t always a priority. But images matter. 40% of consumers say that photos and images are the top visual element on a website.
Images give your website design a personality and help it stand out. While many businesses use stock photography, it’s also a good idea to invest in taking original photographs. All you need is a mobile phone to create a great photograph for your website. You can also use visual content tools to create unique graphics.
You should also think about the idea behind your image choices. While a fun image can make a website look great, if it’s not useful to your user, it’s not adding to the professionalism of your site.
So, give yourself time to choose attractive AND useful images, especially for your most important pages.
5. Add useful professional tools.
Professional audiences have distinct needs. If you want your website to be a continuous resource for your target users, you need to give them useful tools. And even if you’re learning how to make a free professional website, there are inexpensive tools you can add to your site.
For example, a scheduling app can make it easier for prospects to set up meetings with your sales team. Chat functionality can help customers solve problems faster. And adding social feeds to your site can connect site visitors to your community.
One of the benefits of WordPress is its extensive library of plugins. Whether you want a map widget to help shoppers find your store or to tell subscribers about a new post on your blog, it’s simple to add extra functionality to your site.
6. Engage your audience.
No matter how professional your website looks and feels, it has to engage people. This part of website design is one of the most important, but it can also be a mystery.
Website analytics can help you root out problems once your site has been online for a few months. But you want your website to perform from the time of launch.
