Make your Website Stand out in 2015

How do you make your website look like the cool kid at high school? The objective with a website, after all, is to make it as popular as possible – just like the most popular girl in high school. These are the girls who wear the right clothes (well-structured website), are pretty (clean, attractive website design), and who are outgoing with friendly personalities (good products or services to sell on the website). If you think really hard there were probably lots of girls like that at your high school, but something made one or two stand out as the really memorable girls. You need to find that “something” in terms of design to make your website stand out in 2015.

Here are five things you can do:

Big Images

Using big, high-resolution images is a way to instantly make your users say “wow that looks good”. Full screen images that feature minimal text grab attention. Minimal text is ideally two or three words.

The type of image is as important as the size and resolution. Make it stunning and interesting and, if the subject matter suits, it should also be beautiful.

Typography that Stands Out

The use of large font sizes is a growing trend and one that will become more important in 2015. The idea is that you use fewer words but display them in a way that is more attractive – using a large and good-looking font.

This takes bravery and confidence in your brand, product and services. To see this just look at how much text is often placed on the websites of small and medium-sized businesses. But users don’t want to read so much text, particularly if it is repetitive. So, focus on getting the message perfect and cut down the words. Then cut down the words some more, and display what is left using a big and beautiful font.

Intelligent Navigation

Good navigation has never been more important. There are several reasons for this:

• Website users go through online content quickly
• Attention spans are short so if something is not intuitive, users will move on
• Lots of users on your website navigate using fingers rather than small mouse pointers

You have to take all of this into account when creating the navigation structure for your website. It should work on all devices and the path that users follow should be obvious.

Flat and Responsive

Having a design that is both flat and responsive is now almost non-negotiable. This is because users want clean and uncluttered websites that work on all their devices. Pages overloaded with information and packed with gadgets, widgets and gizmos, and that don’t work 100 percent on a smart phone, stand out for all of the wrong reasons.

You can make yours stand out for the right reasons by using flat design and making your website responsive.

Make it Personal

Smart phones and tablets offer an incredibly intimate way of accessing information. And the information that many of us see is highly personal, particularly when logged into our Facebook, Twitter or Google accounts. All of this has contributed to a change in the way that consumers regard advertising and marketing messages.

The age of the mass communication, one-size fits-all-message is over.

So the final tip to make your website stand out in 2015 is more about content than it is about design, although you can use design to achieve the objective. And that objective is to be more personal. Tell a story and don’t be stuffy, remote or aloof. Give your brand more personality and talk directly to your target audience as individuals, not as a mass group.

If you do these things, you will get you noticed.