It’s easy today to create a beautiful website. Simply sign up to one of the many free website builders andin minutes you can have a sleek web design and attractive looking site.
Youwould be excused in thinking that this is an effective web design. But the factis, although a website may look good, it can be far from functional and suitedfor the user’s needs.
Generic,non-tailored websites that aren’t designed with your particular end-user inmind are the antithesis of effective web design. Effective web designis determined by users and their experience of a website.
Thisbrings many factors into website design thatgo way beyond mere aesthetics. Great web design is about the usability of awebsite, or in other words, the combination of form (how good it looks) withfunction (how easy is it to use).
Sinceyour site is also the face of your business and the place many potentialcustomers will visit first, you want it to give off a positive impression aboutwho you are and what you value. What’s more, poorly-designed websites don’ttend to perform well on Google, not least because ofhigh bounce rates and low conversions.
Ensureyour website gives your customers the right impression and ranks high on thesearch pages with our top five principles of web design.
Everywell-designed website caters for the needs of its users. And the best way tomake a website that caters for users is to have a very clear purpose.
Webdesigners ensure every site, page, and section they work on has a clear anddefinitive purpose that it aims to address. This could be anything fromproviding information and offering entertainment to allowing a type ofinteraction and completing a transaction.
Crowdedand over-designed websites don’t work. When there are too many elements on onepage, it only leads to distraction and confusion. Great web design, like this example fromHelias Oils, is therefore not only clean and simple but purposefuland built to fit directly in line with what the user wants.
Evenif every aspect of your site has a clear purpose, if it takes too long to load,then it’s all but useless to the user.
Theproblem is, in our culture of little time and an abundance of choice, if awebsite doesn’t load pretty much instantly, very few users stick around towait.
Thankfully,to meet these user expectations, there’s no shortage of tools and tricksdesigners and website owners can use to improve the loading time of theirsites.
Someof the best ways to improve page load times include optimising image sizes,combining code into a central CSS or JavaScript file, and minifying HTML, CSS,JavaScript. Improving speed and performance is an experimental and ongoingtask, so make sure to track any of your changes using Google PageSpeedChecker.
Despitetext taking up much of the space of a website and reading being one of the mainactivities users do online, typography is often overlooked for its impact onthe overall success of a website.
Ifyour website gets the basics of typography right, then it is well ahead of most.First, Sans Serif fonts—contemporary looking fonts without decorativefinishes—like Arial, Helvetica, and Verdana, are easiest to read online.
Theideal font size is 16px. It’s also recommended to stick to a maximum ofthree-point sizes for a streamlined design. Similarly, it’s best to use no morethan three typefaces across headings, body, and elements like buttons.
Anexcellent example of a clean and streamlined typography design is Channel 4’s website. The site sticks tojust a few font families and colours, and in doing so, keeps the user’s focusdirected to the video content for which they are there.
Aswell as following the basics of typography, an important principle of webdesign is clear and consistent communication.
Userswant information quickly, and so no matter the medium, your message has to bestraight forward and easy-to-digest. For instance, for menus and graphicalelements, this involves organising information hierarchically, and for content,it means making good use of bullet points and subheadings.
Asyou can see, improving the communication of your website isn’t always aboutadding more information. The best websites get across what they need to in asfew words and elements as possible.
Thewebsite of Headspace, the most popular guided meditationapp, is a great example of effective communication. Through using mainlygraphics and bold colour, its homepage manages to convey what the app does andwho it is for without saying more than a handful of words.
Responsivedesign used to be optional for effective web design. Today, if your website isnot available across multiple devices and multiple screen sizes, it’ll struggleto not only attract users but also rank well in Google.
Tomake your website mobile-friendly, the easiest place to start is from scratchby rebuilding it with a responsive layout. Otherwise, you can create adedicated mobile site that is separate from your main site and specificallyoptimised for mobile users.
Withthe growing use of smartphones, tablets, and now phablets,making your website fit for mobile users is a must. From there, you can furtherenhance your design by following best UX and UIpractices for mobile design.
Web design is an ever-evolvingfield. But if you put these five web design principles into practice today,your website is sure to perform well through 2020 and beyond, so contact us today to see how these fiveprinciples can improve your website.
