We regularly incorporate the most effective web design elements in Sydney to give our clients an edge. With our web design services, we discuss UI design and UX design strategies that will suit your brand and incorporate our core of set web principles to suit your brand’s business objectives. Engaging UX are built on a foundation of solid UI design, Your dedicated Sydney web designer will ensure your new design completely matches your brand.

Here are 9 of our core principles that will lead to an innovative web design working for your target market.

1. Set clear website goals and objectives

The year is 2020, anyone who knows anything about the web can build a website. However, the challenges arise when brands 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 new 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.

2. Focus on the user

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. If your brand is targeting Sydney locals, then it is very important that your website design is created to do just that, appeal specifically to your audience in Sydney.

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.

3. Send a clear, consistent message

Communication is very important in web design. When a person in Sydney 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.

4. Organise content flow

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.

5. Every website element should have a purpose

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 in Sydney 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.

6. Design for all devices

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 website’s 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 design possible.

7. Choose the right colour combinations & typography

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 web design.

Just like content, there should be consistency in your web 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.

8. Allow easy navigation

Easy navigation is an essential element when it comes to web design. 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.

9. Optimise website page loading speed

Now that you have learned all the principles of web design, another crucial component is website loading speed. All the mentioned principles are useless if the user opts to leave due to unbearable page 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.

What is a Mobile-First web design?

Mobile-first web design is a method in which your website will be designed to specifically cater to mobile devices.

The goal is to provide users with the most seamless browsing experience specifically through their mobile devices. In creating a website or app, mobile-first designers begin with sketching and prototyping from the smallest screens working its way up to the larger screens. It means that it upgrades your screens from a smartphone level to a laptop and desktop versions.

Basically, this web design strategy is about giving your user the right experience in every device. But, one of the most important and fundamental aspects of this mobile-first design is focused on content. In which you can choose only what is important for your consumers instead of having many different versions of your website.

Here are the 3 core benefits of a mobile-first web design:

Mobile Users Are Greater Than Desktop Users

When you take a look around you will notice that most people are glued on their mobile devices. Even before we fully open our eyes in the morning, the first thing we reach out for is our smartphone. This is a huge reason why mobile traffic has now surpassed desktop traffic across all major industries.

Your business should be treating the mobile version of your website as a priority, no longer should it be an option.

Availability 24/7

According to a study, an average individual checks their mobile devices 85 times a day and spends five hours browsing their smartphones. It is crucial that your website be easily accessible via a mobile device so business details such as trading hours and contact information can be easily seen.

In any type of business, it is highly recommended to keep in touch with your customers aside from the fact that it drives customer engagement. As we have already mentioned, people are mobile and it is important to have constant communication with them even on the move and being on desktop websites doesn’t really help.

Mobile phone users want a more personal, fast and smooth experience and this is why mobile-first strategy is a must to your business.

Google Prefers Mobile-First

If you’re aspiring to be ranking on top of Google, then it’s vital that you prioritises a mobile-first web design. Google encourages web developers to utilise mobile-first for a better mobile experience.

The search engine giant has gone as far as introducing Mobile-Indexing first, whereby they will crawl the mobile version of the website first – before desktop. This means that Google will rank and assess your website based on how your mobile-version is structured, not your desktop version. This is especially important for SEO. Speak to an SEO agency in Sydney to find out more.

1. Animated Infographics

Visual content can instantly catch your audience’s attention. This is why the use of infographics has been successful over the years. The use of images and illustrations in the presentation of content and information is a proven winner. It’s no different when it comes to this latest web design trend. Using illustrations to tell your brand’s story is still among the top web designs to expect for this year and beyond.

Strategic use of detailed infographic-like illustrations can enhance the users’ journey as they traverse the world you made for them. Combining those beautiful illustrations with animation and sound would immediately catch your audience’s attention. Expect to see more and more brands adopting these features.

2. Oversized Elements

The advent of mobile phones has brought upon the use of oversized elements. Modern websites that have appeared in 2019 have emphasised design elements to the extent that they appear to be overly huge on any device. From the images, videos, and even the menu buttons, the website elements are superlatively presented.

By oversizing, videos and images are presented in the grandest ways possible–and they look great. This full-screen mode technique is definitely eye-catching. Most websites take advantage of this to present their stories right off the bat. With the users’ short attention span, implementing oversized elements in desktop and mobile designs is a must to quickly grab the former’s attention.

3. Bold Fonts

Similar to the use of oversized elements mentioned above, the use of bold fonts has evolved from just being utilised for the purpose of functionality to a form of style. This type of design is prominently used today to tell the audience where to start their journey or what they should look at first.

Readability of texts and visual hierarchy are, of course, achieved by this type of design. You can also add the fact that the latest apps you can see today have their fonts enlarged and boldened. This gives the user a sense of familiarity while they’re on your site. Avoid using this style on long pieces of text, though.

4. The Use of Animation

Motion and animation is a common sight among modern websites. It’s a formula that ensures engagement, interest, and appreciation from your audience. It isn’t new but it’s still effective. Combine motion and animation with other elements like the click-on, layered, and other immersive application—you’ll be having a dynamic website that’ll be the envy of many.

Web designs like this will surely dominate this year. More and more and big brands use animation-filled designs as part of their website construction planning. This technology is getting cheaper by the day and the skills of website designers are already honed to implement this technique.

5. Minimalist Website Design & Negative Space

The number of types and styles in web design, including all possible combinations, can be infinite. Stuffing your website with too much clutter can have the tendency of pushing away the visitors. This is why some designers coined the phrase “less is best”. The minimalist approach pertains to a more laid back yet sophisticated web design.

Common examples of minimalist designs include the use of monochromatism (black and white), fewer elements, and plenty of white spaces (negative space). In other words, it strips back the design of clutter as well as it helps accentuate the most important parts and information on the page. Designs like this are too simple to create but are extremely efficient.

6. 3-D or Pseudo 3-D

The use of 3-D in digital rendering is a common sight today. This is due to the availability and affordability of the tools used in creating this type of web design. The processing power of the machines used by modern designers is more than capable of creating the most realistic images and interactions.

Using 3-D or similar effects (Pseudo 3D) seems likely to be the way of the future. The results that we are seeing now at the concept’s early stages are already gorgeous. We can’t help our excitement just thinking about the possibilities in the years to come.

7. Geometric Shapes

Well, the use of the geometric shapes in a website’s design isn’t “new” at all. It has been around and used over-and-over again in the past few years. What’s impressive about this design is its ability to stand the test of time. The improved skills of designers have also made the use of geometric shapes improve in terms of aesthetic value pretty much common today.

You can do a lot of things just by using geometric shapes. Have you noticed that the websites of the top brands in the world have some sort of geometry in their designs? There’s the appeal. Geometric designs easily attract one’s sense of sight. The enhancements available in today’s web design technology (e.g. animations, layers) will most likely solidify this trend on our list for a long time.

8. Vintage Web Designs

Before we go to the more sophisticated web trends of 2020, let’s go back and give our respect to the past. Simple web designs dating back to the early 2010s have become the standard in the industry. They still have their elegance and appeal. Most importantly, they are still usable.

These vintage web designs are currently the staple when it comes to small websites. Modern website owners still prefer to go back to this style as their preference. However, with tons of changes in the horizon, expect this website design trend to slowly fizzle as it rides out towards the sunset.

9. AI/Contextual Technology

The use of Artificial Intelligence, particularly Contextual Technology in web development is a very intricate and complex process. It’s activated by using the user interaction to collect data then adapts to the needs and preferences of the user. This leads to more personalised experiences for the user.

It may be in its infancy stage now but context-aware programs are already used in a lot of apps and in a few websites. More adaptive systems are integrated into the design process. Contextual technology programs may run implicitly (hidden, in the background) or explicitly—as a direct response to user interaction.

10. Voice Technology

Voice technology is something that every brand and marketing manager has heard of. If you’re already using Alexa or Siri in your home and on your devices, you’ll understand what we mean. There are websites that are using this technology at this very moment. This is one of the most advanced website design elements on this list.

A heightened User Experience (UX) can be achieved if navigation, content search, and purchases can be done just by using one’s voice. With both contextual technology and Voice technology now in our grasp, a new dawn in the web design industry is coming. Expectations will surely be elevated and the competition will be at its stiffest.