The following website sections drew the most attention from the participants:

• Logo (6.48 seconds)
• Main navigation menu (6.44 seconds)
• Search box (6 seconds)
• Social media icons (5.95 seconds)
• Main image (5.94 seconds)
• Written content (5.59 seconds)
• Bottom of the website (5.25 seconds)

Keep it simple

A well-laid-out, easy-to-navigate website will always be more effective than one that’s cluttered and overloaded with information. Dan Veltri, co-founder and chief product officer of Weebly, advised limiting your top-level navigation menu to five clearly labeled tabs with related pages organized under those.

“Five to 10 pages is sufficient for the majority of situations,” Veltri said. “Add site search to the top-right corner of your site so that visitors can quickly find what they are looking for. Use a few strategically placed, high-quality photos to give your site a professional look.”

Provide easy access to contact information

A good business website should drive calls and sales leads, but it can’t do that if your potential customers can’t reach you, said David Brown, CEO, chairman and president of Web.com.

“Your contact information should be visible, preferably at the top of the home page, so that visitors don’t have to search for a phone number or address if they want to contact the business,” Brown told Business News Daily.

Veltri agreed, noting that having a contact form accessible through the main navigation menu is the best strategy.

As the Missouri S&T study found, users spend time looking at both social media icons and the bottom of the website. Including your social links in the header and footer of your site will serve as both an attention grabber and a way to keep in touch.

Take advantage of SEO

A picture may be worth a thousand words, especially on a website. But that picture needs to be SEO-friendly in order for customers to find your business.

“SEO is another critical factor of website design,” Brown said. “Search engines will analyze your website from the top to bottom, left to right. Pictures will not be picked up by search engines, so be sure to include keywords that will enable your site to appear in results.”

Make it mobile-optimized

As consumers increasingly use smartphones and tablets to browse the Web, it’s more important than ever to make sure that your business website can smoothly transition from desktop to mobile views.

“Consumers already demand a desktop experience when browsing on a mobile device or tablet, and mobile-optimized websites will be the key ingredient to delivering on that demand,” Brown said. “Websites with limited content and clunky navigation will be quickly passed over for a site — and a business — that delivers a better experience.”

“Choose a website service that takes care of [mobile optimization] automatically for you so that you can focus on running your business,” Veltri added.