The end of the year is coming and people are slowly getting into the holiday spirit. Since major holidays such as Christmas call for some special attention, it is a great excuse for you to do something more for your company’s digital presence. Let’s face it, you would be changing your UI anyway, why not do a couple more tricks while you’re at it? Here are some tips on how to upgrade your holiday efforts.
Home page is the star on top of the tree
The role of your home page is to intrigue people just enough to make them want to keep browsing your website. You need to give them a teaser trailer, let them know what your business is all about without giving out too much information.
If it seems easy, it is not. It takes talent to concisely say just enough. On the other hand, your design has a similar role. It needs to be fetching. Your marvelous text would be worth nothing if the design of the page is horrid.
Since Christmas season is upon us, you should add some real festive decorations to the actual design. However, our advice is to make the basic design first and then add decorations later, so you can switch to basic design when the holidays are over and still have a brand new UI.
White spaces as distance standard between decorations
Splitting your texts into paragraphs is a great way to organize your thoughts, as well as your readers’ thoughts. This seems a bit silly, but it is quite an effort as you would need to go through all your digital content, revise it and organize it into paragraphs. Chances are you would need to change the content, too, in order to fit the new initiative.
However simple this sounds, it has an extremely positive effect on the readers. For example, people can keep track of what they already read much more easily than before. Also, each paragraph is a whole and it’s easier to get interrupted and keep going later. Once you do this, make it a standard for every future content addition, so you would avoid another refactor in the future.
Add color for livelihood
When it comes to design, simple and minimalistic is the way to go now. However, nowadays, everything is beige and gray and neutral. Unless you wish to bore your readers into oblivion, consider adding some color to your digital world. Don’t be afraid to be different, be brave and add shades that you like and feel people will respond to.
On the other hand, try not to go overboard and repel viewers with too much color. Try to be original, yet tasteful. You will see by your readers’ reaction whether you made a good decision or not, but at least you are doing your own thing and that matters.
Optimizing your website for viewers like finding the perfect spot for the tree
Most entrepreneurs don’t stress about optimization. In the beginning, when setting up a business, nobody wants to invest in optimization. When you are trying hard to attract even a small number of people, it seems silly trying to optimize.
However, if you do not do it in the beginning, you will probably have forgotten about it until the first crisis. This happens most of the time which is why investing in responsive web design is something that should be done at the very creation of the business. If you set your platform up in a way that it can support numerous simultaneous users, you would be ready for anything.
More importantly, any business that fails to do this until it is too late loses a lot of money and a lot of customers as they have to fix it all when they are at the peak of their popularity. Everyone will rate, tweet and rant about their failure on all social networks and it will be a huge blow. This is why you need to be smart and do this before a crisis strikes.
Call Santa’s little helpers for feedback
When it comes to rating new ideas and deciding which new features to launch, entrepreneurs are facing huge challenges. Testing the market is never easy and it is never certain. New features cost a lot of money and if you test everything on production, it would cost you a lot, both money and customers. On the other hand, if you would have some external help to nudge you in the right direction whenever in doubt, it would mean a lot for your business’ development and budget, too.
If you hire a test group to cooperate with your SMB, you will always be one step ahead and you would be saving money and the world from bad ideas.The only trick is choosing the right folks for the test group. It needs to be an accurate representation of a random sample of your exact target audience. Feel free to invest a lot of time and money into creating a perfect group of testers as they will be your most useful tool in the future.
Last, but not least, think of that special something that is going to make a difference between your business and any other. The industry is quite saturated with all sorts of businesses. It can be quite a challenge making a name for yourself that people will remember. This is why you should promote your story and your ideas boldly. Do not be afraid to show your true colors. It may be what people want to see and hear. If there is a personal story behind your brand, fear not to share it with everyone.
People respond to good stories and emotions, they empathize. If you don’t believe it, start from your own point of view. Would you rather remember and trust a brand that has a heartwarming story or some generic sterile business that only functions in a formal manner? So, pour your heart into your website and enjoy the results.
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Author Byline: Liam Collins is a tech pundit and Web enthusiast working at TuiSpace.com. He spends most of his time reading and writing about the current affairs in the world of information technology. When he isn’t working, he likes going for long bike rides and walks in nature.
