Don’t let your website be the crutch that keeps your business from reaching its goals and potential. You may like your current web site and it may be serving its purpose, but it’s never too late to improve upon what you have. Here are a few simple tips to ensure you have a complete, professional website design.

1. Eliminate clutter

Start improving your website design immediately by cleaning up all unnecessary clutter because it is distracting to visitors. Staying simple and clean is the best way to make the most of your web site.

• Reduce the calls to action to just one or two.
• Graphics can be nice, but don’t overdo it. Use imagery if necessary to support the text.
• Keep paragraphs short – three or four sentences is usually enough. Long paragraphs look daunting and can the quickest way to get a visitor to exit the page.

2. Use a professional looking logo

Your web site is part of your branding strategy. Be sure to use a crisp high-resolution logo on your site. The most commonly used location is the upper left corner.  Visitors are accustomed to looking on this area of the page for the logo and to link back to the homepage from other site pages. Visitors know this as the quickest way to return back to front page.

3. Use professional photography

Visitors will be quick to judge the quality of your business’ work from the quality of your website. So If you are going to use images on your site, be sure they are high quality and professionally done. Consider photos taken with your mobile phone, tablet, or mini handheld as unacceptable. Although great for sharing photos with your friends  and family through your social networks, they generally are not high-end quality. You can get great quality images for almost any topic at sites like istockphoto.com or bigstock.com. If you desire totally unique images, I would suggest hiring a photographer to take the shots to fit your business needs.

4. Stop using Flash

If you don’t already know, Flash will soon be a thing of the past. If you are using Flash animations on your site, or have a Flash “Intro” to your site, remove it – you don’t need it. Flash does very little to enhance your web site, and in most cases visitors tend to find them annoying. Make sure that visitors to your site are taken directly to the homepage  because any extra time spent loading Flash animations and having to watch them can cost you visitors. Plus, Flash is not compatible across all devices.

5. Use a responsive design

This one, although not as simple as the first four tips, is highly important. It may require you to seek help from a professional web developer.  Responsive design means that your website will be compatible with mobile devices. Typically, responsive design tells the browser how to look and act depending on the device being used, and still look pleasant. The mobile market is growing quickly and having a design that is easily viewable and useable by mobile users is critical. These are some simple tips that can have a great impact on your overall web design and more importantly the experience your visitors have. Make the most out of your site and implement these five simple steps and be on your way to a better, more professional looking site.