7 Core Principles Of A Good Website Design
There are 3 things that make a good website; how it looks, how it feels, but most importantly, how it works. All three aspects have a lot to do with your website design. As a business owner, your website directly impacts your overall sales since it’s the first point of interaction your business has with its clients.
Online shoppers are very impatient, and if a customer lands on your landing page and they have a hard time finding the information they need, they will leave. That is lost business! How do you ensure that your website provides you with a great conversion boost? Here are 7 design principles that work!
1. Mobile Optimization
The rise of smartphones and mobile devices have made it necessary for all websites to be mobile-compatible. More than half of your website traffic comes from mobile devices. This means that if your website has only been optimized for desktop devices, you will be losing out on customers browsing on their mobile phones and tablets.
Where do these clients go? To your competitors! Make sure your desktop design is adaptive enough to accommodate all screen sizes.
2. Easy Navigation
When a customer lands on your website, how easy will it be for them to find the information they are looking for? A web visitor is more likely to stay on your page if they find your design intuitive and interactive.
To maintain website design that is easy to navigate, you should:
- Follow the three-click rule — make sure that site visitors can find everything they need in 3 clicks.
- Have a logical page hierarchy — all the categories on your website should be unique, while the subcategories should relate to the category in which they are placed. Make sure all the website elements are arranged in order of their importance to make it easy to establish the focal points.
- Use breadcrumbs — they provide the web visitor with a traceable trail of the areas they have been to on your website, making it easy for them to track the pages they visited.
If a website user finds your navigation confusing, they will leave your website to find the information they need elsewhere.
3. Consistency
This is one of the golden rules of website design. Consistency enhances user experience and has a great impact on your overall sales. It makes a website feel familiar and, therefore, easy to navigate.
As a customer moves from one page to the other, they shouldn’t experience much of a difference. Which areas should you pay the most attention to?
- Visual design — which are the most prominent colors on your site? Are you using the same font on all pages? Do you have a specific link color? These small details matter, and users will begin to associate them with your website.
- Web elements — these are the footers, headers, navigation bars, sidebars, etc. they are the building blocks of a website and should be in the same place throughout the site.
- Content — your web content should be a reflection of your brand voice. If you decide to go with a conversational tone, ensure you use it in all your content. Avoid using a casual tone on some pages and a formal tone on the rest; let there be consistency in your content.
4. Simplicity
There is something captivating about a website that is clean, simple, and neat. When designing a website for your business, keep one thing in mind; you are doing it for your customers. A sophisticated website will make you feel smart, but your web visitors could find it difficult to navigate.
A complex web layout also tends to be frustrating to the users, and having too many elements on one page could be distracting. Don’t over-design your website. Keep it fresh and simple.
Simple websites are appealing, and they give users the perception that your website is easy to navigate.
5. Fast Load Times
Nobody wants to wait 40 seconds for a website to load. In fact, web users are very impatient and will not wait for more than 3 seconds for pages to load. You have to make sure your website has been optimized for speed.
Google has a free tool that helps you check your site speed and gives recommendations on how to improve it. In addition to optimizing your website code, ensure your images are also optimized so that they don’t slow the site down.
6. Great Content
There’s only one main reason people visit your website; to find a solution to a particular problem. If you are an ecommerce store, you will be providing them the solution with your products. If you are in the service business, your services are the solution.
The website content gives meaning to your products or services and prompts your audience to take the actions you’d like them to take. Furnish your website with content that meets your audience’s needs.
Quality content also comes in handy when you are optimizing your website for search engines.
7. Color Combination
There’s a very thin line between a color combination that is attractive and that which is distracting. Choose a color palette that creates your website a balanced design and enhances your audience’s user experiences. Too many colors would be overwhelming to users, so stick to 3 or 4.
Colors have been known to elicit emotional responses from people, so use a color combination that is prevalent in your industry. The best design practice is to use your brand colors on your website so as to enhance consistency.
Design an Aesthetically Pleasing and Functional Website
You could be designing the website for your business, but the truth is that it belongs to your customers. Think of it this way, they are the ones that will be interacting with your site, and if they don’t like it, they will leave.
Design a website that is simplistic in nature has a great color combination, is easy to navigate, is optimized for all screen sizes, and loads fast. With great user experience comes a lower bounce rate and higher conversions, and this is all dependent on how well your website is designed.
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