A visually appealing web design doesn’t always mean that it will become a great functional website. There are many variables that come into play in order to ensure that your new website functions and performs well, the design is simply one aspect.
In this article, we will cover all the most important principles that you should first consider when developing your new website.
The year is 2020, anyone who knows anything about the web can build a website. However, the challenges arise when businesses both require and demand that their websites be performing exceptionally well to achieve strategic business goals.
To do this, you have to clearly define during the initial planning stages what the main objectives are for creating the website.
This can be done by setting your short-term, intermediate, and long-term goals for your website. In addition, you can build a list of the smallest details that collectively work to achieve your primary goal. By doing this, you will be able to quickly understand what will be required to achieve those goals.
Keep in mind that the website is not about you. Whilst it is important that you like the look and feel of the website, ultimately the success of the website is dependent on how your users engage with it.
The user is the person who will validate whether your website has performed as planned. To put it simply, the success of your new web design is directly correlated to each users’ browsing satisfaction.
From the planning stage to the very end of your website development, place the user at the centre of it all. Use user personas to identify your target audience. Identify their needs, pain points, and basically what makes them tick. Understand their behaviours, their levels of comfort, and the journey that they’re on. Place yourself in their shoes.
Ultimately, you should be presenting solutions to their problems. Trigger their emotions for them to open their hearts to you. Gain their trust and confidence for them to be able to make a purchase.
Communication is very important in web design. When a person visits your website, make sure that your message is presented as clearly as possible. Use fonts that can be easily read and scanned. Think about the use of headlines, bullet points, and strategically placed visuals to achieve a balanced ratio of text to images.
Most importantly, speak your user’s language. Don’t confuse your audience. Use terminology and phrases that are familiar to them. This is also the opportunity for you to show your brand and how much you know about your audience.
Be clear in thoughtfully and tastefully telling them:
– What you have to offer – What you can do better than your competitors – What you want them to do
Aim to get your users’ trust and loyalty towards your brand. Message consistency will allow you to build a stronger brand. You won’t get that anywhere but from the perceived value brought by your audience.
Great content is characterised by having the ability to engage with your audience instantly. It uses the art of storytelling to present a memorable user experience. It also provides value to the user as well as to you.
To achieve this, organise the flow of content in a way that it will be running as smooth as it should be. Present everything naturally and logically. Just like a great story, set a clear structure around your goals. Set up funnels properly, infuse substance into your content, follow your SEO strategy, and practise a content-first approach.
Every element that you include in your website design should have a purpose. Don’t treat them as decorations. Avoid using features that won’t have anything to play in the realisation of your goals and objectives. Remember that you don’t have unlimited space to work on.
Moreover, there are trending web designs that focus on minimalism and the use of “white space”. They look great. Every element used in this type of design has a purpose to serve, they’re easy to optimise in terms of performance, and they’re user-friendly.
Remember that one of your goals is to make your users comfortable throughout their journey. Only include the elements that matter to them.
Practising this principle can catapult your website to greater heights. PC-only websites are as extinct as the dinosaurs. More than half of the population browsing the web are on non-PC devices like smartphones and tablets. Always make sure your website’s design is optimised and adapted for different screens.
Responsiveness is the key element to focus when you want a mobile-friendly website. Fluidity and flexibility are characteristics to definitely implement in your design. Allow your user to scroll up or down just by swiping the screen on their device. Make sure images can be expanded. Incorporate automatic shifting and resizing in the design. In short, aim to achieve the best UI/UX possible.
The users’ experience can be augmented by a well-balanced colour palette and carefully thought typography. The visual senses are stimulated by the colors you use. The readability is enhanced by using contrasting colours on the text. Complementary colours, on the other hand, will give balance and harmony to your design.
Just like content, there should be consistency in your design’s colours and typography. Organise your design elements on CSS stylesheets. Pay attention to which colour combinations work well together or otherwise. Choose the typography that matches your brand, the atmosphere you want for your site, and of most importantly, easy to read.
Easy navigation is an essential element when it comes to designing websites. This is where you lay down the road for the users’ journey. Your website’s visitors should feel convenience and efficiency while they’re on your page.
Arrange your visual hierarchy in a way that the most important content is accessible in just a few clicks. Sitemaps are essential tools in navigation. Don’t take them for granted. Use them appropriately. Your users would definitely feel welcomed if they’ll have the freedom to freely explore your site and go where they wish to.
Avoid using multilayered dropdowns, excessive internal links, and over-cluttered menu. Classify your keywords accordingly and strategically create individual pages for them if necessary.
Now that you have learned all the principles discussed above by heart, there is one last thing you shouldn’t ignore when designing your website – page loading speed. All the aforementioned principles are useless if the user opts to leave due to unbearable loading speed. Remember the “three seconds rule”.
There are several factors that directly affect the loading speed. A few examples are user’s internet speed, the size and type of the content, and the elements within the page. Make sure to “compress” the images and videos, the page size, and the codes (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) for lightning-fast loading times.
These principles are extremely important to ensure that your web design is heading in the right direction. As you can see, they involve a lot of aspects like the general aesthetic, experience design skills, technology, and even the understanding of psychology and emotion.
We hope that this article will serve as a web design inspiration to you and to your business. What do you think of our principles? Do you have other principles to add? Share your thoughts.
If your brand is in need of a new website or a complete website redesign, call us on (02) 9339 4500.
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