First impressions really do matter, you have nothing but a few seconds to grab someone’s attention once they end up on your website so make that first impression as good as possible and maximise the chance of a new visitor becoming a captive reader, subscriber, buyer or whatever your desired end goal is. 

Below we look at 5 key strategies that you can easily implement yourself that will instantly improve the visual appearance of your website.

1. A cohesive colour scheme

Colour can be a powerful tool, but an unfocused approach to colour on your website will instantly make you look unprofessional. 

Usually, a good colour scheme for your website will start with the primary colour from your logo. You can keep it as simple as that, or start to incorporate other shades of your primary colour for things like gradients and accents throughout the site. 

If you’re struggling with coming up with a colour scheme, check out Coolors. This is a fantastic free tool that lets you input your brand’s primary colours and generate a palette around those, or you can use it to create an entirely new palette from scratch.

2. Pay attention to typefaces

Never use more than three different fonts on your website (even three is pushing the limits). 

You should have one for headings, another for the body text/main content, and a third might be used sparingly for high impact areas such as hero headers and banners, although your heading font will usually be sufficient for these areas too.

The fonts you end up using should also complement each other. Google Fonts will show you popular pairings of fonts to help you decide on a great combination.

If you see a font that grabs your attention on another website, Fonts Ninja is a really cool tool to easily find out what fonts they’re using.

3. Avoid large sections of text 

Unless it’s a blog post, people don’t want to sift through paragraph after paragraph of text. Your cornerstone pages should be clear, concise and organised. 

Break your pages up into sections of easily digestible snippets that clearly convey the messages you need to communicate. 

Most users have a habit of quickly scrolling through pages to find the information they need, so help users in this search by utilising headings and subheadings with short yet descriptive pieces of text that quickly tell a visitor what they’re looking at.

4. Be consistent across different pages

Once you have a format that looks good with consistent colours, fonts and structure, replicate that format. 

For example, let’s say you have four separate pages for different services, each of those pages should all follow the same format.

Then if you’re using a theme builder like Divi, you can simply import the layout to use on the other related pages. This not only saves you a bucket load of time, but it reinforces your brand with consistent, professional design throughout the entire site.

5. Modern images and icons

Don’t cheapen the look and feel of your website with ugly and dated visuals. 

These days finding beautiful, free images to use is definitely achievable. 

Unsplash is our go-to source for fantastic, high-resolution and royalty-free images, Pixabay and Pexels also get notable mentions. 

We’re visual people, using icons can be another great way to break the text up on your page while still effectively conveying a message. If graphic design isn’t your strong suit, work with a designer to come up with an icon set that’s unique to your brand and product offering. 

If you’re a DIY kind of person, Envato Elements can be a lifesaver for things like icons. You can also get images, videos, graphics and more from Envato to help piece together your website.

Plan your brand

The main lesson that keeps popping up through the points above is to really focus on being consistent with all of the visual choices on your website.

The visual appearance of your website goes a long way towards building a lasting impression and creating a positive browsing experience for your site’s visitors. 

So put a bit of time into building a plan, start to structure your approach to all of the visual elements and use the steps above as a kickstart for developing your own brand guidelines to follow moving forward.