​Here's the bottom line - if someone visits your website and they can't quickly and easily find what they are looking for, then they'll leave.

It really is as simple as that.

We start by talking about your company, the services and/or products you offer.  Then we find out which are the most popular, what are you trying to push forward more into the eyes of your customers and website visitors.

Foregoing the usual slideshows that generally waste time and space, are clicked on by less than 80% of visitors, we instead use the top part of your website home page as a visual focus point giving visitors a clear view of the main things you can provide, with obvious clickable buttons or other features so they can quickly navigate to where they want to be.

It may sound obvious, but it is still something missed by many web designers in Carlisle and also many in the UK and beyond.  They are still designing websites like they were done 5 years ago, before research and evidence was put together by those who know much more than me on how visitors scan a website page, how they interact with menu items and other parts of the website pages.

Even other simple things like contact details - for many businesses, we are seeing websites where their phone number or contact details are only shown at the bottom of each page in small text.  If phone calls and emails are important for your business, then we make sure these are there and clear without any need for visitors to miss them or give up finding them!

Navigation is so important that getting it wrong can be the difference between a website working for your business or not.

Take a look around at your favourite websites, consider their focus and think about how they have managed (or not!) to make sure this is put across to you, the visitor, in a suitable way.

For us, making sure anyone finding our website knows quickly and easily what we do, what our main focus is and then how to get in touch is what we considered.  When Light Bulb Web Design was first launched, we had a few people advise us not to show prices as that would put people off, so for a year we stuck to that and didn't.

Then we reconsidered - what if the lack of pricing was putting off those who figured they couldn't afford a professional website?  So we used our pricing structure to put some indicative prices together for a range of website design types and sizes, displaying them clearly on relevant pages.  What happened?  Our enquiry levels jumped up and almost doubled within a few months.  People were calling because they already had an idea of our prices and knew that what we charge was within their budget - so rather than people getting in touch and finding out we were beyond their budget, we were getting more web design enquiries that turned into clients as well.

So when you are looking for the right website designer for your business, take a look at their past work - see how they are presenting key points and services for their clients and choose on function and visitor focus, not just on the aesthetics (which are important as well, but be honest, few people are likely to buy a Ferrari with a 50bhp lawn mower engine, however nice the Ferrari looks!).