When developing a website for your company, there are certain aspects to keep in mind from a design approach that can make or break your website. Even if you do not plan to spend a fortune on your website, paying attention to each of these things you will guarantee that the final product is something of which you can be proud.

Here are 5 tips for designing your company website, even on a budget:

Tip #1: Make sure your Website site loads in 5 seconds or less: Have you ever tried to view a Website only to find that it takes 10 or 20 seconds to come up on your screen? Unless it has been suggested by a friend or you have some other impassioned wish to visit the site, you probably gave up and moved on. The first 5 seconds is extremely critical in terms of the attention span of your visitor. During that time, you need your site to load and for the visitor to be able to “get” what your site is about. If it takes longer than this, your visitors will run out of patience and exit. Tip: if you want to show off a long flash presentation, try featuring it on a page other than the home page.

Tip #2: Limit the menu bar to 5 options: Your website needs to be singular in motive and concentrated in appearance. If your site is trying to be all things to all people, it will end up being of worth to almost nobody. The easiness and focus of your site design are expressed in your navigation and represented on your home page by your menu options. If you believe your site requires more than five menu options, make some of them sub-menus that are accessible only after the user selects one of the five main options.

Tip #3: Make clearly identifiable a call to action: Ever shopped at an IKEA? Their stores have a non-traditional layout that allows you to look around openly and yet practically leads you from one section to another, right on through to the multiple cash registers and food goodies waiting for you at the end of your journey. Let this serve as a example for how to set up your Website: on every page, you need to make it abundantly clear to your site visitors just precisely what it is you want them to do. Do you want them to contact you? Order your product or service? Add a comment to your Web site? Whatever it is, make this call to action very simple to spot both textually and graphically from anyplace on the site.

Tip #4: Provide free and clear access to additional help options: You do not want to lose sales (or visits, or regardless your goal for your visitors maybe be) just because you failed to give someone the chance to ask a question. Just as with your call to action, make it transparent to visitors that no matter where they are on your website, they can quickly locate help via phone, e-mail, live chat, call back, user forum, or knowledge database. Hint: present the assorted options in a prioritized ways depending upon expected user needs.

Tip #5: Show continuity among other website design elements: The look-and-feel of your site as a whole is really just a mix of all of its various components. Pay careful attention to every detailed component of your new site. Use suitable colors and graphics, pay attention to font size, make sure your messaging is readable and makes sense, and make sure images look sharp and appealing. Items that you think are insignificant might form the basis for whether someone chooses to stay on your site or find that of a competitor. Whether you are designing your own site or hiring a skilled designer, pay attention to these items and you will have a winning site for your business.