One of the initial steps for creating any website is the overall Website Design. Having an eye-catching, and well-designed site is vital, as you want to have a professional standard, run throughout your business.
Here we are going to emphasize 10 principles of professional website design:
Simplicity
Simplicity is the primary goal of a website design. Keep your design simple. Let users understand what you do without doing investigation work on your website. Don’t put too many elements that can distract your audience.
By providing a clean and fresh website that appeals to your visitors, let them navigate through your website seamlessly.
Consistency
Keep all your design elements consistent throughout various pages on your website. You should not change the style of fonts, headings, sub-headings, and buttons on different pages.
For this purpose, finalize your visual style and fonts, choose your colors, and stick to them during your website design and development process.
Readability
Users don’t read a website, they scan it. Don’t make them escape from your website, because of some creative, but hard-to-read, typographies.
Using visually appealing and readable typography and fonts for visitors can also positively impact your website’s SEO.
Having white spaces in your design is very helpful for the readability of it. A page full of text looks busy and cluttered. Though, it doesn’t mean you should use less content on your website. You should just keep in mind to organize your text and white space wisely.
Mobile Compatibility
Just as any business should optimize its marketing and media for smartphones and tablets, you should also make your website compatible with mobile devices.
If you don’t provide a responsive website that supports all screen sizes, many of your visitors leave it for a competitor.
Colors and Imagery
Pick a good color combination for your website, so that your visitors get attracted, instead of distracted. Experts suggest using a complementary color combination on your website to give it a balanced look and leave a good impact on your users.
Also, try limiting your colors to 3 or 4 tones and not more than that. Avoid a colorful look on your website.
Comply with the same rule for your images. Using many vibrant images on your website does not feel good on the visitor side.
Ease of Loading
Work with a web design agency like Simple Solutions South Africa to ensure your website is fast to load. Visitors are getting increasingly impatient about waiting for a website to load, so you must address any loading issues.
For this purpose, you can reduce HTTP requests by combining code into a central CSS or JavaScript file. You can also compress HTML, JavaScript, and CSS to improve loading.
Ease of Navigation
Make your visitors feel at home when on your website. Let them navigate around your website as effectively as possible.
Studies show that having easy navigation on a website reduces bounce rate significantly.
Creating a logical hierarchy for your pages. Use breadcrumbs and clickable buttons in your website design. This way visitors can navigate easily through your website and won’t leave it soon.
Communications
The ultimate goal of a website’s visitors is to get the information they need, as efficiently as possible.
If you can communicate the information they are looking for well enough, they are willing to spend more time on your website. And thus, they won’t leave you for another website.
Clarity
Use clear language on your website. Avoid using cute and clever names that are not familiar to the eyes of the visitor. Clarify technical names if you have to use them.
People skip marketing-induced names and company-specific names. An exaggerated way of expressing ideas is also easily ignored.
- Come to the point as fast as you can in your sentences.
- Use outlines and bullet points to break the flow of long text blocks.
- Talk simple and reasonable. Don’t talk like advertisements on your website.
Conventions
Conventional design of websites is useful, as it reduces the learning curve for visitors. It means that you shouldn’t put a cognitive load on your users. They shouldn’t think long to figure out how things work on your website.
Using conventions can also gain users’ confidence and reliability and strengthen your brand.
Author Bio: Ayla Anderson is an avid reader and an enthusiastic blogger who writes articles on home improvement, business, Family and beauty. She is also an MBA student who spends much of her time giving advice to newly small businesses on how to grow their businesses. You can follow me on Twitter.
