Nothing is more important in today’s marketplace than user-experience. And that means that website hosts need to do everything they can to improve the look and feel of their websites. Unfortunately, too few hosts are spending the time or resources necessary to do a good job on this front. And for that reason, they’re falling behind and losing business.

All’s not lost, however. There’s plenty that you can do to turn a flagging website around. Take a look at these tips to totally revamp your site.

Be Responsive Across All Platforms

Many website owners do an excellent job when it comes to the desktop experience. Their websites are snappy and easy to navigate. But then they let themselves down on both mobile and tablet. Here’s the thing: users want consistent, easy to access content. And they want it across all their favorite platforms. If you’re running a blog that looks terrible on mobile, you’re setting yourself up for a fall.

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Here’s a pro tip: develop your website for mobile first and foremost. This will help refocus your mind and undermine cognitive biases. Most of us want our site to be viewed on big PC screens because it is easier for us. Unfortunately, what’s easier for us isn’t always what visitors want. And if there’s one thing they want, it’s mobile content.

Watch Out For 404s

Do you know what a 404 is? It’s a nasty error that could be severely hampering the success of your site. 404s are essentially errors that crop up when a page can’t be found. It’s one of those dreaded error messages that’s reminiscent of the old blue screen of death.

404 errors aren’t just a pain for your website. They hurt you in many other ways. Visitors who can’t find what they’re looking for will go find a better site. And search engines will penalize you if they can’t find all your sites’ pages. In other words, 404s are bad for customers and bad for your website.

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Fortunately, you can quickly check to see whether or not you have 404 errors on your site. Google’s Webmaster tools automatically crawl through all the pages on your site and check for unfound pages.

Make Your Site Consistent

If there’s one thing that will make your website look smart, it’s consistency. It’s the holy grail of web development. But what exactly does it mean? Essentially, it means keeping everything matching, from headers to footers. You want to make sure that your typeset is consistent across pages. And you want to make sure that all the other features on your website are complementary. Say, for instance, you have a black and white photo on your home page. To be consistent, you’ll want to make sure that you use black and white images on other pages too. You’ll also want to make sure that your button style is consistent across the pages. Users want to have a visually stunning experience as they navigate. And you want to give the impression that you’re a real pro in everything you do.

Make Sure Your Headings Are Immaculately Written

The titles that you choose for your pages are probably the most important aspect of page design. For starters, they’re what visitors see when they search for your site in search engines. And for that reason alone, they are important. You want to generate titles that are catchy and engaging. They need to stand out but also be relevant to the content that they introduce.

But they’re also critical for search engines too. Search engines rank pages favorably depending on their titles. So if a visitor is searching with keywords, it’s more likely they’ll find the page they want through your titles.

Organise Information Into Bullet Points

If you’re a business, bullet points are your friend. When a customer visits your site, you only have a few seconds to convince them to do business with you. So the last thing customers

want to do is read vast tracts of prose about your products. You’re not a blog.

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A better solution is to use some type of bullet-pointing. You can, of course, be inventive with this. You don’t just have to present your key points in a list like you might find in a word processor. If you’re introducing a product, you could use clip-art as bullets to illustrate the benefits it brings. This makes your bullet points more visually appealing.

Introducing bullet points help you stay concise and on the topic. And it makes it easier for your visitors to find out what it is that your site offers.

Hyperlink Intelligently

Hyperlinking is a great way for your site to build links to other pages on the web. The idea behind this is to boost its visibility to search engines. But there is a way to do hyperlinking – and a way not to do it.

Research shows that people expect hyperlinks to be blue and underlined. Thus, your website should exploit this. No, you don’t have to choose an exact navy blue color. But changing the color of the text and underlining seems to be essential.
You also want to be careful with what passages you are hyperlinking. Hyperlinking a short passage, like “click here” will be a lot less effective than passages like “click here to find cheap deals on car insurance.”

Brush Up On Your Calls To Action

Calls to action appear all over your website, from getting new subscribers to product signup. But it’s one of those things that’s notoriously difficult to get right.

Extensive testing has shown that calls to action are affected by a whole raft of different factors. One of the biggest factors is color. Different colors evoke different feelings in your visitors. And sometimes those feeling can be at odds with what you’re trying to entice them to do. For instance, the color red can mean passion, but it also means stop. So you wouldn’t want to use a red blog sign-up box if you want to get subscribers to your golf blog.

The words you use are also important. You want to get visitors to do something. Give them a choice between signing up for free, or taking the pro version of your product. Don’t let them pass up an offer with a “no thanks” button.

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