If you have a small or medium-sized business in Orange County and you’re planning on taking your website live soon, it may seem like there’s a lot to remember. If you’ve designed sites before then you won’t be overwhelmed, but what about the newbies that are trying to handle this critical step themselves? If you plan on managing all the design work for your site, that’s admirable, but you want to avoid any critical mistakes. Here what you should remember as you get closer to the launch date.

Think About Visual Design Fundamentals

The copy on your site matters a lot, Orange County businesses, but equally vital are the visuals you choose to feature. You want pictures that explain complicated concepts as simply as possible. You want them to grab the user’s attention, and to help convey the value of the content.

You should feature only high-quality pictures, and they should highlight the products that are for sale on each page. The main image on your home page should act as a focal point for your brand. What best conveys what your company represents? Is it a picture of your most popular product? Is it of your storefront? Some of your employees at work in the store or out engaging with the community? If you’re concerned about branding, maybe the landing page should feature your logo prominently. These are aspects of website design that genuinely make a difference.

Also, don’t use any visuals that look nice but can’t be tied directly into your brand. Users will only ignore them, and they’ll take up space that could be used to feature something more valuable.

Responsive Design and Mobile Friendliness

These two concepts tie into each other because mobile site use is so prevalent these days, Orange County. Earlier this year Google announced the Mobile-Friendly Update. It penalizes sites that are deficient in critical ways, such as those with intrusive pop-up ads or pictures that are improperly formatted. A user appreciates a mobile site that looks exactly like a desktop or laptop version, and with which they can interact just as easily.

Before you take your site live, you should make a checklist of website design features that you know to be essential. Then, go down that list and make sure that you’ve neglected nothing. If you’re finding that there’s some part of the process that is too much for you to handle, you can hire a freelancer or an SEO company to give you a hand. You don’t want some aspect of your site not to work because you were too proud to ask for assistance. You have to do all that you can to give your business the best chance for success.