4 Business Website Design Best Practices Top Businesses are Already Using

Building a business website is easy. Building one that’s successful is much more difficult. Creative Market examined 1,000 of the leading online business websites today and found common features between each and every one of them. The business compiled all the trends into a neat little infographic that business owners can draw real value from. Now we’re going to expand on that information and explain to you the key points of a successful business website. Follow these guidelines and you’ll optimize your website, you’ll likely improve any SEO efforts you make, and hopefully, your site will become more successful as a result. Because who doesn’t want to be more successful?

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Font Matters with a Business Website

Websites are essentially online portals made up of three elements, text, pictures and video. Of the three, the text is by far the most important. A business’s text explains concepts in-depth and the other pieces on the page serve as resources or an expansion on that explanation. According to Creative Market’s findings, it’s imperative to nail the right font down when you put your website up. If your website is using the wrong font, color or size, you’re missing out on potential visitors whether you know it or not.

Utilize a Sans-Serif Font

After looking at the analysis of Creative Market we were surprised to see that so many of the sites relied on a Sans-Serif typeface, but when you stop to consider the benefits of Sans-Serif it makes sense that so many of the leading online websites would be leveraging this leading type. The major difference between sans-serif and other typefaces is that there are no little feet at the bottom of the letters. That might not seem like much at first, but removing those feet makes a website easier to read when using low-resolution devices like a smartphone.

Choosing the right font option can make your website accessible and more enjoyable to a larger group of people, which is exactly why so many market leaders are relying on top sans-serif fonts like Helvetica, Arial, and Open Sans. If your site uses a font with intricate details or small feet, one of the first things you should do to it switches over to a sans-serif font to make it more accessible to everyone.

Go for a Deep Black Font Color

According to the study by Creative Market fonts closest to black are best for business. When looking over all 1,000 of those top websites, nearly all of the sties relied on pure black for their font color. Some of the sites relied on a dark gray as the font color as well, but pure black, or #000000 for all you hex users out there is the most obvious way to go. Lighter colors might look cool, or create a unique look for your site, but black is the most practical option for serious web owners looking to expand.

Choose a Mid-Level Font Size

Creative Market observed three main font sizes in use on all the websites, 14px, 16px and 13px in that order. There were far more websites out there with a 14px font size than any other. That doesn’t mean that 16px or 13px isn’t any good because they have decent success as well. The findings show that you definitely shouldn’t be going with an 8px font, or a 20px font though. Readability is everything in an online website, and a mid-range font helps ensure that your sites show on full-sized computers as well as mobile devices.

The Takeaway

  • Choose the right font for success. Black, 14px, Sans-Serif works best.

Article Length is Important

Next on the web-design checklist should be the length of your content. According to the research covering the top 1,000 businesses, the wordcount to shoot for is 605 words. That’s right in the middle of the range and shows that quantity isn’t the most important factor. These businesses are all wildly successful, and they aren’t relying on 5,000-word articles to achieve that success.

Instead of adding every single detail into your business articles, focus on the important key points, explain things very clearly and rely on branching articles to address topics more closely.

The Takeaway

  • Nail your page design, and create brief, top-quality content. Longer isn’t better in the case of article length.

Site Speed is a Real Factor

Have you ever been stuck at a business website where every page loads slowly? It’s infuriating. That’s exactly the opposite of how you want your visitors to feel when loading up one of your business webpages. This is why we weren’t surprised to see that the average website response time of the 1,000 top websites examined in the study was just 1.36 seconds. That’s pretty darned fast, and that means visitors will enjoy a smooth browsing experience.

Business owners need to rely on lightweight themes when building a site so that it loads as fast as possible. Take a website speed test right now and look for ways to decrease your load times if they’re notably higher than the 1.36-second gold-standard.

The Takeaway

  • Top websites load quickly. Take action to avoid having a sluggish site.

Page Size Matters

This goes along with site load speeds, but during the Creative Market tests, the average webpage size was just 66,970.0928 bytes, or significantly less than 1Mb. Those findings show that fancy sites aren’t better. Instead, simple web pages that minimize heavy graphics and special features are the industry-standard. Lightweight web pages load faster, and they show up nicely on a wider range of devices. That’s why business owners should go for a simple approach with their own sites.

Check your web page size and try to find ways to minimize it if the size is significantly higher than 1Mb. Bigger is not better in this case, and those bloated pages could be deterring visitors hoping for fast information. Cut the page size down and we guarantee you’ll see faster load times as well.

The Takeaway

  • The best websites feature compact pages. Cut down on your own page size for improved customer interaction.

Now you know what the top business owners are doing. It’s time to take all those simple best-practices and apply them to your own business website. Look through the details and make the necessary changes for yourself. It’s worth the effort, we promise!