Whether you’re creating your business’s first website, expanding your portfolio of sites, or cutting ties with your old website and starting anew, there are a number of things you will want to keep in mind.

When you’re designing a new website, the options are endless and it’s easy to get carried away. As with many things in life, though, it’s important to stay focused and not lose sight of the key elements you want your website to accomplish.

There are so many different aspects that decide whether a website will be successful, but if you take care of the basics, then you put yourself in the best position to succeed.

Here are 4 simple tips for designing your new business website.

1. Clearly Define Your Goals

It’s essential to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve with your website. Every website you go to has a slightly different purpose, and you need to know what the purpose of yours is.

Is it there to showcase your brand, sell products, attract people to your physical store, or sell a service? There are so many options here, and you will probably decide on a combination of a few key goals, but the important thing is that they are clearly defined, and you keep them in mind when designing your website.

If the goal of your website is not obvious to you, then it’s not going to be obvious to your customers, and they won’t end up taking the actions you need them to.

2. Prioritize User Experience

No matter how clearly defined your goals are, you aren’t going to be able to get customers to take the actions you want unless you provide them with a good user experience. Keeping websites simple and easy to use is so underrated, and many businesses fail to do this.

The internet offers people so many options that they simply won’t stand for poor user experience. If they see errors, broken links and a poor user interface, then they’ll get their information from somewhere else.

Your website needs to convey the principles of your brand, and if you offer a poor user experience, then your customers will expect a poor experience from the rest of your business.

3. Make it Fast

While people won’t stand for poor user experience, they’re even less likely to wait around for a slow site to load.

The longer people have to wait for your website to load, the more your bounce rate is going to increase. This means fewer visitors using your site and less chance of ranking your content.

It’s a great idea to get your website professionally tested by a company like digivante.com before you launch to make sure you’ve ironed out all the kinks and your speed isn’t going to be affected.

4. Give Value to Your Visitors

Don’t just do things to please algorithms and get your website ranked. The real audience you need to impress is the human one that actually reads your content. Make sure your content offers the human visitors to your site real value, and they will reward you with their custom.