With millions of websites on the internet, customizing your site is essential if you want visitors to remember your company. You also need to find a way to stand apart within your own niche or industry. Here are three critical factors to consider during the website design process:

• Template: Choose your predominant colors and a theme and stick with it through every page.

• Company logo and banner images: It’s worth the money to hire a professional graphic design company to create your company logo. That is the lasting image people have of your company, and you can’t afford to put out something that looks like a student or amateur produced it. You may want to have the same graphic designer create banner images for your website as well since this gives it a look of uniformity. Banner images go across the top of individual pages on the site to provide a better idea of what the reader can expect to see there.

• Include an About Us section and an introduction to key staff members: This part can be less formal, to help your staff seem like real, relatable people to your readers. Sharing a story or two of how the person ended up working for your company or his or her experience with its products and services helps people to identify with the staff as regular people. Read dozens of other About Us and team bios online to get an idea of what you must do to differentiate your company.

Think Like a Successful Webmaster

Building a successful website requires a transformation in thinking. Those responsible for contributing to it must see it from the prospective customer’s viewpoint. That starts with knowing what online users need and want and finding a way to deliver it to them. Your team needs always to consider how the user experience can be better. Additionally, continue to customize your website until you know for sure that it ranks higher than that of several of your nearest competitors.

By contrast, an unsuccessful webmaster considers things from his or her vantage point. Concerns such as how many times to use a keyword on a page, how many links he or she has to the site, and mastering the latest SEO tactic become the most important pursuits. While these things are essential, they can never replace the care that must go into standing out from the competition and improving the user experience. Online businesses with engaging, useful content that is better than the competition will ultimately go far.

If you ready to take your website to the next level but not up to designing it yourself, consider hiring a professional web design company. It will cost you money upfront, but it should pay off in increase visits to your site as well as conversions.