How WordPress makes website design simple

Decided to use WordPress to build your new website? Good shout, because even the most amateur of web designers can magic up a beautiful looking, user-friendly website that turns visitors into paying customers.

But good site design isn’t just about aesthetics – the benefits of an attractive website go beyond skin deep…

Look the part, play the part

First impressions count. You have very little time to capture someone’s attention on your website – less than 15 seconds in fact. This is where overly complex, confusing or inappropriate website designs fall down hard.

While visuals and font style do matter, users need to be able to easily find what they're looking for. Website users spend an average 6.44 seconds focused on the main navigation menu. That’s how long you have to create a positive user experience (UX) – so don’t forget the following.

4 principles for great site design

Colour palette – It needs to stand out, be instantly recognisable and speak to your specific audience.
Consistency – Maintain similar, if not the same, font, colours, and tone of voice throughout your site. Defining some brand guidelines can help.
Readability – Don’t get carried away with wild font design or long explanations. Keep the copy simple and short.
Navigation – Nobody likes getting lost, especially not digital consumers. Make page navigation clear and simple.

Once you’ve taken these into account, expect some great rewards. Visually, an attractive site can help you stand out from the crowd in your industry, enhance brand perception and even rank higher on search engines. Functionally, a positive UX and smooth customer journey is great for retention.

Most users won’t purchase on their first visit, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t planning to. Get the fundamentals right to secure their return!

Design and refine like a pro

Ready for some good news? You don’t need to be a pro designer to create a good-looking, smooth-functioning website. At least you don’t with WordPress anyway!

There’s tens of thousands of tools, plugins and features out there that can make this easy, as long as you use them with the right purpose in mind. Here’s a few we recommend.

Brilliant builders:

Seed Prod – Famous for making website building easy for the everyday user, its drag and drop editor helps you craft a design that fits your brand image like a glove. Plus choose from 150+ unique templates.
Beaver Builder – Ideal for fast and accurate editing to build a lean, lightweight site. Every page you create will be 100% responsive for mobile and tablet devices too.
Divi – Like the previous options, Divi enables simple drag and drop editing. And it’s both a WordPress theme and site builder! That means you can craft the right theme and then tailor it using the built-in editor.

Top tools:

Theme Check – Test your WordPress themes according to the latest coding standards to strengthen security and performance.
Font Awesome – Create your own toolkit of cool fonts and icons that adapt to any screen.
WP Umbrella – Monitor your website with ease. Track and identify PHP errors, and keep an eye on uptime and performance.

Lightning fast WordPress hosting with Fasthosts

Congratulations! You’re on your way to an amazing looking, fully functional website. Now make sure it loads at lightning speed with our WordPress Hosting.

Our WordPress Hosting guarantees mega-fast page speeds, while 24/7 support means you’re never left in the lurch – we’ll even throw in a free domain and SSL. So what are you waiting for? Get in touch with our expert team today.