Design and social media. Two seemingly different things, but no, both have an important impact on the other, especially for business owners who are trying to generate huge traffic to their websites. Besides rich content, the look and feel of your website will decide whether you can make social media users stay on your site, and whether they will recommend it to their friends. How then, does design exactly influence these net savvy visitors?

a) Loading time of your website

The majority of social media users are impatient, and with millions of websites out there for them to visit, the loading time of your website is very important. Your site should always load easily and without any irritating pop-up ads. Without all these, visitors will be able to browse through your content easily.

b) Your website’s design and usability

First impression matters, not just offline, but definitely online as well. Visitors to your website will decide whether to stay and browse through your website in the first 5 to 10 seconds of their arrival. Factors that will decide how long they will stay on your website depend very much on the general aesthetics of your portal. “Does it look pleasing?” “Is the site user-friendly?” “Will I be able to find what I want quickly?” “Are the pictures and images appropriate?” and so on are some of the questions you should ask yourself before deciding on the design of the website. Design your site with your targeted visitors in mind. It is important to engage social media users before they decide to leave a site that does not serve their purpose.

c) Content of the website

A website that is looking to generate huge amount of traffic should inject fresh content into their pages frequently. Your content also needs to be easily read, and presented in a digestible format on the page, with the aid of images, bullet points and text highlighted in another colour, or bold. Most social media users do not read pages word for word, so take this issue into serious consideration.

d) Inserting buttons or widgets for social media

If you web content manages to engage social media users, how then do you get them to recommend your website or page to other users? Most websites provide social media buttons or widgets for users to recommend your website to other users. Incorporate such buttons effectively into the design of your website, and your traffic will flow with ease.

e) Including effective links inside your content

I usually try to encourage my visitors to browse to other sites by including a few other links within the body of my content. Other methods you can try to include are navigation bars or menus to enable visitors to click on. All these will increase traffic and page views.

f) Mailing list

Most importantly, you would want to keep a list of who visits your website, and keep those who are interested in your content, or in receiving fresh, new content regularly. We do this by way of a mailing list. Subscription options should be placed prominently on the front page, or on pages where your visitors can clearly subscribe to your list.