With the advent of so many do-it-yourself website services, enhancing your web presence is easier than ever. Your website is the number one place customers are going to learn about what you do and decide if they want to proceed with the registration process. For that reason, having an effective website is so important.

A lot of time can be wasted in building a website that looks good but doesn’t do a good job in connecting you with customers. A visitor to your website will generally know within 5 seconds if they want to learn more about what you do.

Here are 5 best practices for effective web design that will guide you into a better performing website and more customers.

1. Have a Clear Call to Action

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What do you want your visitors to do? Make that purpose absolutely clear. Don’t assume that the user knows what you’re thinking or what you expect. Your website should be so clear in the action you want customers to take, a cave man should understand it. Repeat your call to action over and over again and make it obvious.

2. Use High-Quality Images

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The quality of images you use will make or break your site. The only thing worse than long load times for a website is blurry and pixelated images. Quality images convey the sense of quality in your offering.

3. Use Consistent Style

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Consistent design is calming to visitors. A website that has too many different styles and sections not only makes it difficult to digest information, but it looks downright unprofessional. Establish a style and stick to it. Try to use 3-6 colors at most and only use those colors throughout the site. The same goes with fonts. Choose no more than two different font families and no more than 3 different sizes of fonts.

4. Make Text Legible

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When overlaying text on top of images, always make sure the text is legible. Text overlayed on top of busy images causes eye sore. No one will read text that is difficult to see and sore on the eyes.

5. Be Efficient With Space

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A common mistake is to cram too much information in a small areas. Don’t overpopulate your page with links, text and graphics. Whatever information you want to share, make sure it is communicated well.

Following these 5 best practices for web design will help you better connect to your customers than ever before.