There’s nothing more frustrating than a poorly designed website – they are hard for users, and worse, they work against your efforts to market online. if  your website is like most, it has one or more of these common issues.

• Cluttered home page
• Poor navigation
• Hard to read
• Out-of-date design

Your website should help you grow a following and retain customers. Here’s what you need to know.

Make Your Home Page Awesome

Many home pages are stuffed with too much content that leave visitors at a loss to discover what you are all about and what you can do for them.  Keep your home page focused. Tell people why they want to navigate deeper into your website.

Provide a Clear Path with Navigation

Your website navigation should be easy. This is not a place to get clever or creative. Present navigation that works like people expect. Use words that are clear. Labels like “Products,” “Services,” “Blog,” “About Us,” and “Contact” often appear in the menus of websites for a reason: they’re straightforward and easy to understand.

Ensure that your site hierarchy makes sense. Keep as few pages as are needed. Scrolling is no longer an issue for users. Group pages under logical menu items.

Help Visitors to Scan Content

Make sure your website is easy to read and understand. Limit the number of fonts, colors and styles. Make sure fonts are large enough to be read. All of these make your page and content harder to scan.Think short: short subheads followed by short words in short sentences grouped in short paragraphs.

Keep the Design Fresh

What’s the first impression created by your design? Does it look oh-so 90s? Design conventions change and your site needs to evolve too.One big change is the move to responsive techniques that makes sites easy to view on the small screens of mobile devices. Your website should look great on desktops and mobile devices.Responsive designs adapt to the device type that someone views them on. Make sure that your site buttons and menus are large enough to click on smaller screens.