Web Design Ideas to Bring Visitors Back

When I lived in Texas (yes this NY girl spent 15 years in Texas), I discovered the power of the phrase “y’all come back now.” No matter how many times I heard someone say it, I always found myself smiling and looking forward to coming back.

But it takes more than just a few words at the end of a visit to make a customer feel welcome and appreciated. It starts with the right greeting and in the attention to little details, from well organized aisles filled with just the right items to helpful, well informed employees.

So how do you make customers feel welcome In the digital age? Here are a few basic web design ideas on how to create a pleasant experience for visitors and sends leaves them with a smile on their faces.

Welcoming Web Design Ideas

Create a logical starting point – People may come to your website for many reasons but what is the most important thing for them to see? Structure your home page so there is a logical next step. Use simple, calls to action (CTAs) to drive them to the next step on their journey.

Reduce Clutter – Your website visitors do not need ALL the information you can possibly give them on the front page. If your site is interesting, appealing, and well organized, serious prospects will look at a second page.

Simplify Your Navigation – It can be challenging to anticipate what people are looking for so there is a tendency to clutter the navigation with drop down menus. Unfortunately these multi step drop down menus don’t work well on mobile, and actually aren’t all that helpful even on a desktop.

Instead of complex menus, consider a design with secondary navigation on sections of the site. And invest the time to categorize and tag key pages so they show up when visitors use the search function.

Make Your Site Relevant – Your site should be designed to answer the questions people are most likely to ask. In most cases, they don’t care about your mission statement or your company values until after they are convinced you can help.

Think about the questions visitors are most likely to ask and present that information first. This will improve the user experience and it will also improve your SEO as you naturally include the words and phrases that are likely to be used for search in your content.

Keep Content Current – No one likes to wander through a dusty store with old inventory or waste time on a website with out of date information. Think of the message you’re sending visitors if your content is several months old. And in addition to impressing your visitors, new content will impress search engines, helping you stay visible when customers come looking for you.

Interact With Users – When someone takes the time to ask a question through a contact form or post a comment on the blog, this is your chance to shine and really make them feel appreciated. Use an auto response to immediately acknowledge their question, then follow up with the information they are seeking.

Reply to comments on the blog, thank them for their interest, share a link to other information they may find helpful, and be sure to invite them back.