When you want your website to be successful it has to tick certain boxes. Most of the time you maybe do something because you’ve seen another website with the exact same thing, but what you don’t realize is that everything is there for a reason. You can’t just go copying a random design because you think it looks good. Certain things go in certain places because it result in you making more money, but if you want a fat bank account you need to know where you should put them.

When you’re designing a website and you don’t have a clue about anything it’s always easier to copy what successful people are doing. Where do you start if you don’t? The first thing you need to learn about is what essential elements you need on your site and why they should be there. Other people might do things differently because they have different goals from you, so before you go doing crazy things that will set you back, check out these essential elements.

An amazing tagline

 

When you see a hugely popular website with a catchy tagline it sometimes seems like they are trying to attract everyone to the site. That is because nearly everyone will have heard about the site before and they will know what it is about. You can’t do that when you’re starting out because nobody knows who you are, so when you’re coming up with a tagline to attract people it has to be targeted towards a very small group of them. You have to build a small army before you can take over the world.

An opt-in form

Some sites can have an opt-in form that doesn’t give much away because they know people will automatically want to give them their email address anyway. That is one of the many benefits of being a hugely popular online presence. When you decide to start a mailing list you have to fight for every single subscriber you get. That means instead of just asking someone to sign up you need to think of your opt-in form as a sales page and list multiple benefits that will hook them in.

The colors you use

Every website should use a few special colors because it becomes the ones your website is known for. The color scheme is a big part of your brand. When you look at something that is a certain color on a different site you might decide to make yours the same. Then you see something else on another site and you might copy that too. You should really stick to your own color scheme because that is where you will see the best results.

Things for sale

Your audience might not want you to throw too many paid products in their face because you are still a young website. You have to earn the right to be constantly selling stuff. When you’re just starting out it’s a lot easier to make sales when you build a relationship with people, but once you are more established you can then have a graphic of your product splattered about everywhere. Just remember that, if you are not making as much sales at the moment as you’d like to.

The article style

When you are writing in certain niches it’s OK to have big blocks of text and not much white space, but in most cases you don’t want to make it hard for people to read something. In more academic niches they might not care about a big block of text that is a thousand words long, but when Bob wants to read something about getting a six pack you should make it as easy as possible for him. Get the white space right and you will have a better chance of succeeding.

image source: 1 2 3

Alexander Shekaroff is a web designer and has a firm of his own for web design in Toronto. He likes blogging and is very keen on sharing his knowledge with everyone so that they can benefit from it. This post is just one of his efforts to throw light upon the common design essentials which people should keep in mind before copying others.