By Elephant in the Boardroom

03/12/2020 If you are not a designer, making your site visually appealing is a difficult task. By making your site more visually appealing, it makes your visitors trust your website more. Capturing the attention of your visitor and encouraging them to explore further into your site is important for your website and it will boost its reach to other visitors. With a simple but attractive website, your visitors can easily soak up the message that you want to convey in your site no matter what topic you want to talk about. By simply reaching out to your visitors with an attractive website makes a huge difference, they will feel that connection that will turn into conversion.
You like a place that is organised, clean and has uniqueness, why not apply that to your site too?
This article is focused on helping you understand the basics of making your website more appealing to your future visitors. These tips may not be new to you, but you can still apply these to your new website. Think of this as how to make your website a more appealing guide.
Shall we begin?
They say, ‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder’, it means that your perception of beauty is subjective to what you want but it isn’t always the case. There are always a set of invisible guidelines that we have to follow to achieve attractiveness - especially in designing a website.
To answer the question, what makes a website visually appealing, we have come up with an acrostic that can help you remember it easily: E-L-E-P-H-A-N-T.
E - Engage the visitors with mind blowing design;
L - Light up the mood using colours;
E- Empower critical thinking of the visitors;
P - Place content in proper places;
H - Help visitors with content usability;
A - Address proper internet decorum to show credibility;
N - Nifty Images with captivating meaning; and
T - The consistency of the design.
With that in mind, we can now define some of the basics of what makes a site more attractive to visitors so that when they click on them, they stay and hopefully explore other parts of your website.
The first is using the engaging design and proper colour.
Think of how many times you have seen a bus and your eyes automatically follow that bus or when you stop scrolling to look at the Facebook or Instagram post. But why though? It's because you are fascinated by design and the colour pops up.
Colour catches our attention, the more light is reflected by bright colours, resulting in excessive stimulation of our eyes. Before we even think, our subconscious has already processed that we like that thing - particularly an advertisement or posts. That’s why many brands use colour schemes to promote their product. Take McDonalds as an example: with the striking yellow and red combination, they surely have us follow them (also another tip is that some colours are associated with the things we feel like using yellow and red can cause mouthwatering effects).
Here are some colours that can help increase sales that you can apply to your website
● Red - The all-powerful red is associated with fire and energy. It holds people’s attention and does not easily let go of them. Just do not overuse that colour nobody likes that.
● Blue - The calming capability of the blue colour can help your visitors relax while exploring your site. It can also be defined as a trustworthy and cool colour that you can pair up with other complimentary colours. Best colour for professional brands and companies.
● Pink - The feminine colour that can speak for itself. The gentleness and tenderness of this colour depicts its kindness to the viewer’s eyes. Learning to use the right shade of pink can boost appeal to the site. This colour can be used to attract young female visitors but not so much as for the other gender.
● Yellow - The colour to command someone to do what it says. Much like the colour red, it is also powerful and using it’s brightness signals the warmth of sunshine.
● Green - Green is a versatile colour. It is also warm and cool much like the primary colours that it is made up of. It invites and welcomes people who see it and it is the colour of wealth and health.. What’s more? Green is directly connected to the colour of the environment. If you use this, you don’t have to tell visitors that you are one for the environment, they already know!
● Orange - Orange is energy. It has powerful attention-getting properties, it’s fun and cool, and it makes customers feel as though they’re dealing with a cutting-edge company.
● Purple - the colour of royals. The colour purple can simply touch your site with wealth and elegance.
● Black and White - the power duo can never fail to impress. Used as a modern colour with subtle hints of other colours that compliments them, this colour duo can make your website feel more professional and prestigious.
But without design, colour an elemental part of the site; has no value and is designed poorly which is not going to be easy for the sight.
A great design on the other hand is simply the ability to portray your message to the visitors the best way possible. Like the saying goes ‘Good design is obvious. Great design is transparent’. Great website design feels like you are automatically being shown around the site without you controlling it. You go with the flow and you enjoy it. A great design makes it easy for the visitors to move around and attracts other visitors too. Thoughtful, professional web design gives a company’s customers a better experience, and what’s good for your customers is good for your business. When you pay attention to design, the results are measurable profits.
With the proper use of colour and a great design, anyone can be a fan.
The second is the usage of compelling and captivating images and graphics.
First impressions last and that includes what images or graphics that you use. Captivating images makes the visitors think about those images. It also sets the mood of a website page. It's a good thing that most phones are now equipped with cameras that can match up with the high-end ones that professionals use. Phone camera’s may have limited features though, but it can still take good photos that you can use for your site.
When picking up the correct image for your website, please consider these tips below:
1. Make sure that the image is connected to the content. Choose a picture that is relevant to the topic of your website or page. It has to have a visual that matches with your story. A wrong picture can leave disastrous aftereffects like changing the story's mood or giving misleading information to the visitors.
2. Make your picture bigger.Use a big picture but not the one that uses a lot of space. What we mean is consider choosing a large high-quality image so that it can be used in many ways. A small resolution picture can sometimes make a website look ‘cheap’ because of being pixelated and blurry.
3. Choose a picture that has a story in it.Choose an interesting photo with a compelling story that will make the reader stay on your page. You could choose something unusual that makes your reader wonder about what comes next and that inspires them to click to the next page. Did you think that the above image was strange? Then we can give ourselves a pat on the back for a job well done. ‘Perfect’ pictures are not attention grabbers after all.
4. Stop being lazy and take your own photo!You can easily get your hands-on pictures from stock photo agencies such as Getty Images or Shutterstock. But the images in your publication will probably be less than thrilling. What happens next? You end up with static images that do little to pique the reader’s interest and make them want to continue reading.
Take your own photo. You can use a phone camera since phones nowadays have good quality cameras. You will mainly engender credibility by using your own images. Your own images are unique and personal, and you can choose the perfect picture for your text. Using your own pictures will ultimately provide the reader with more information than a hastily selected stock picture.
5. Keep it up to dateUsing outdated images is a huge faux pas. You should use recent pictures of people you are quoting or interviewing. The subject of your interview or quote will appreciate this but the reader will as well. Make sure that you check the supply date on photos: was the picture taken more than two years ago? Then try and find a more recent one. It’s entirely possible that the person in the picture looks completely different now.
6. Use infographicsDoes your material contain figures or complex subjects, and would you like to find out how to make it more appealing? Use an infographic that presents your complex content in a clear and attractive way. Nobody loves long uninterrupted content that includes a summary or a deluge of numbers. Spruce up your content by adding an illustration that includes the data that you want to present to your audience.
Whatever you decide to do is entirely up to you of course. Whether you pick a pie chart, an illustration, a flow chart or a graph, choosing the right infographic is far from easy.
Third is the website’s usability. The main point of visitors clicking on a website is to gather information that they specifically want. A great website is intuitive and usable to everyone. It’s taken us a decade or so, but most websites now have sifted out what works and what doesn’t, and here are your general areas for great usability:

1. Immediately communicate your purpose, with clarity and an inviting tone.
2. A simple, clear menu that organises the pages of the site, with the most important first. Nothing cutesy.
3. A ‘help desk’ feature, either with a contact page, or contact details in the header and footer, or a live chat so that people can get help.
4. Enough information to help your visitor understand how things help them.
5. A layout focused on ease of use, and ease of reading.

And the last is consistency. Being consistent with your website design means that your visitors can spend less time trying to understand how you’re saying something and have more time to absorb what you’re saying. Consistency is often forgotten. Especially by particularly creative people. Consistent design allows the user to focus on the message.
Some consistency tips are these:
● all your quotes might have a solid colour background. Do that everywhere.
● All your headings might be a certain size and colour. Keep it consistent.
● Your images might look greyscale. Make a brand choice, and then stick with it everywhere.
But at the end of the day, you have the option to make your own formula for being consistent with the design of your site.

Conclusion:● The more attractive people find your website, the higher your chances are that they will stay a little longer. That means you have higher chances of converting them.
● Design and colour are the ones that make a visitor not leave the site.
● If possible, use your own photo and make sure that it has a story to tell.
● Keep the consistency of your website.
If you are not a designer, making your site visually appealing is a difficult task but luckily Elephant in the Boardroom can help you with that. At Elephant in the Boardroom, we take the time to know our client needs and understand where you want to go next. We learn everything we need to know about your business and perceive challenges from all angles. By defining objectives, we set metrics for success. We collaborate and listen to you.
Need a website designer for your business or company? Team Elephant can get the job done. Visit us at www.elephantintheboardroom.com.au or call us on +61 (03) 7018 7620 to learn more.