So, you’ve got a great website, your business is growing and you feel good about things? Is it time to stop and chill out? Never! Here’s five ways to refine your business’s perfect website design. 

User Testing is Where We Start

The obvious place to start is user testing. User-centred design is always key, although it can have its shortcomings as well. It’s fairly straightforward. You’ve got a great website, ask your customers how they found it. Try it out yourself. Try to break it. Go at it from every angle, and make sure you fix every issue you spot. This is always the first place to start when refining your business’s website design.

Understand Your Audience

A website that really, truly understands their audience is going to perform infinitely better than a website that doesn’t pay their audience the slightest bit of attention. Knowing exactly who is buying your product, how they’re buying it, why, where, when, etc, etc, is going to allow you to continually improve the way your website, brand and social media presence engage with your audience.

Fundamentally, this understanding is what allows you to perfect your approach and refine not just your website, but your entire online brand. Understanding that your audience isn’t static, and this needs to be regularly kept on top of is the beginning.

Keep On Top of the Analytics

Analytics and data are every online business’s special weapon when it comes to refining and developing their entire approach. By paying attention to the data provided by different apps and services, you can make sure your customer path, sales funnel and other essential features have minimal leaks and are working exactly as intended. You can refine the ways in which you increase traffic, and make sure that your digital marketing efforts are at least partially quantifiable.

Without making consistent use of data and analytics, you’re going to be shooting in the dark with your website design and digital marketing, limiting your own success. It doesn’t have to be constant, but simply collating and working from real data will help you allocate your time and resources much more effectively, refining your entire online business presence.

Consistently Adapt and Improve

With over 60% of the web now on mobile devices, it’s time to talk about adaptability. Whether we’re talking about responsive, mobile-friendly features, keyword implementation or simply keeping your branding on-point and up to date throughout the website, your business site needs to be consistently and effectively updated. Not in terms of deeper features and actual website design, but in terms of keeping an ear to the ground and eye on the competitors and making sure that your site is doing everything it needs to be.

Keep An Eye on Design Trends

Lastly, I’m going to talk briefly about design trends. There’s always new ones popping up, and previously powerful, engaging options do go out of vogue. You need to keep up to date if you want your site to stay current. Elements like minimalism, quality graphic design, large blocky text, illustration rather than photos and animation are all currently popular, but these trends can and do change.

The important thing to bear in mind is that functionality is always in, so don’t go sticking a ton of animation and HD illustration on your website if it’s going to come at the cost of smooth, speedy loading times and general functionality.