Website Design

What makes a website design convert

Conversion starts with hierarchy. Visitors scan; they do not read. The design decides what they see first, second, and third — and if the most important message loses that contest to a decorative element, the page fails no matter how good it looks.

Every page gets one job. A homepage earns a click deeper. A service page earns an inquiry. A product page earns an add-to-cart. When a page tries to do everything, the layout fills with competing buttons and the visitor does nothing.

Clarity beats cleverness. The headline says what you do. The subhead says who it's for. The call to action says what happens when you click it — 'Get a quote,' not 'Get started.' Vague copy dressed in good typography is still vague copy.

Trust is designed, not claimed. Real photos over stock where possible, a visible process, specific service descriptions, and contact details that are easy to find. A visitor decides whether you look legitimate before they read a single paragraph.

My design process

I start with content, not colors. Decoration applied to an empty structure is how most weak websites get made, so the structure comes first and the visuals serve it.

The build step is where working with a designer-developer pays off. There is no handoff gap where spacing drifts, fonts get substituted, and the mobile layout becomes an afterthought. What you approve is what ships.

• Discovery — what the business does, who the visitor is, and what action each page exists to produce.
• Content structure — page outlines and wireframes before any visual design. If the argument doesn't work in grayscale, color won't save it.
• Visual system — typography scale, color palette, spacing rules, and reusable components, so every page looks like it belongs to the same site.
• High-fidelity design — key templates designed for mobile and desktop, with real content, not placeholder text.
• Build — I develop the approved design myself in WordPress, so the live site matches the mockup in structure, spacing, and speed.

Mobile-first and accessible by default

I design the mobile layout first. A narrow screen forces honest priorities: there is no sidebar to hide weak content in, and every section has to justify its place in a single column. The desktop version then expands from a layout that already works.

Mobile-first is practical, not ideological. For most businesses, the majority of first visits happen on a phone, and a design that only works at 1440 pixels wide is a design that fails its most common reader.

Accessibility is part of the same discipline. Text meets contrast requirements, touch targets are large enough to hit, interactive elements have visible focus states, and the page structure makes sense to a screen reader. These choices widen your audience and overlap heavily with what search engines reward.

Design that supports SEO and speed

Design decisions set your SEO ceiling before a single keyword is chosen. A page's heading hierarchy, content order, and semantic structure are design outputs — and they are what search engines and AI answer engines parse to understand the page. I design layouts so the visual hierarchy and the HTML hierarchy tell the same story.

Speed problems are usually designed in, not coded in. An oversized hero video, four font families, and animation on every scroll will sink Core Web Vitals regardless of how well the site is built. I design within a performance budget: every visual element earns its load time or it goes.

Layout stability matters too. Elements that reserve their space prevent the page from jumping as it loads — a direct Core Web Vitals factor and a real irritation for users. Because I handle technical SEO and performance work daily, these constraints are in the design from the first wireframe, not patched in after launch.

How to evaluate a design before you approve it

Use this checklist on any design you're shown, from me or anyone else. It takes ten minutes and catches most of the problems that surface after launch, when they are expensive to fix.

• Show the homepage to someone unfamiliar with your business for five seconds. Can they say what you do and who it's for?
• Pick any page. Is there one obvious next step, or several buttons competing for attention?
• Look at the mobile version first, not last. Does it read as a complete design or a squeezed-down desktop?
• Check the content. Real headlines and real paragraphs, or lorem ipsum? Placeholder text hides structural problems.
• Read the smallest text on a bright screen. If you squint, your visitors will leave.
• Ask what each large image, video, or animation is for. If the answer is 'it looks nice,' ask what it costs in load time.