You might have heard a lot about web design. Web design is something that everyone on the managerial end of a business has to deal with. However, only web design experts understand it completely.
There are so many different directions and styles in which your website can go. Be it classy, minimalistic, playful, or vibrant. This web design company in Sydney will help you develop a great web design for your website.
Excellent web design reveals your line of work, personal style, and brand identity. It looks easy at first glance, but it isn’t. Here are web design tips and UX best practices for having an excellent conversion-optimized site.
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Homepage with the minimum information
Do you read every word or line of a website? I am sure you don’t. So, your website’s homepage should communicate only the core message. Visitors mainly scan the page, picking out keywords, images, and sentences. With this behavior in mind, it is always better to appeal to customers’ emotions rather than words.
Try to keep all the essential stuff on the homepage. It will enable the visitors to understand what your website is all about without scrolling anywhere else. Add high-quality media features like icons, beautiful photographs, and vector art. These will do wonders as alternative ways to communicate with the audience. Encourage visitors to perform the action you intended by placing a CTA (call to action) button on the homepage.
It is good to avoid all the clutter from the website as it is one of the most common mistakes that beginners make. Most people have a list of almost everything that they want to put on their website. But without having much information, they put everything on the same page. If you include too many distracting elements on the website, the visitor will not know where to look and can move out of the site.
Make the website less crowded and include only the most relevant information. Limit the number of pull-out menus and drop-downs so that you can reduce the clutter. Try not to use sidebars as new visitors mostly do not use them. If all the options do not fit in the main navigation menu, there will be a need to simplify the navigation structure.
Follow the hierarchy
Hierarchy is a critical principle of design that helps display your content. The correct utilization of hierarchy will assist you in leading site visitors’ attention to page elements in the order of priority, starting with the most significant one. Highlight your top assets like logo and business name by making them visually prominent.
Use the correct website layout to direct the visitor’s eyes in the right direction. You can place your logo or a critical CTA at the header to attract visitors. Once you follow a clear hierarchy, readers will unconsciously follow the pieces of information that you have left for them. Then apply color, contrast, and spacing for further visual attention.
You can also make use of visual hierarchy. It places different visual elements like placement or size to influence what elements the user will see first and what last. Featuring a bold and big title at the website’s top and tiny little information at the bottom will help to highlight certain elements over others.
One of the main ideas behind creating a web design is to guide the users. You can do this by allotting different weightage to different elements, thus directing focus where you want it to. However, another useful option is to make use of visual cues to attract the visitors’ attention.
Including people in images on the website is a great idea to enhance attention. Humans connect to other people in a far better way than ordinary images. Human photos manage to increase the conversion rates at a much higher rate than a text-based landing page. However, the whole positive effect of human photos will negate stocking the website with photos. Make sure that you do not add multiple images and add real and genuine images on the website.
Easy-to-read content
Readability implies how easy it is for the site’s visitors to recognize words, phrases, and sentences. Visitors will be able to effortlessly skim through the site’s content if the readability is high. Do not make the mistake of keeping a small font size. A typical rule of web design is to keep the font size bigger to make it easily readable.
Try to maintain sufficient contrast between text or background color to attain readability and website accessibility. Your website color scheme should match your brand colors, ensuring a distinction between the elements. Make sure you write content in different sizes that include a large title, smaller subheadings, and smaller paragraphs. It will ensure that you draw the reader’s attention.
Moreover, keep the website simple as the majority of the visitors do not like visual complexity. There need to be lesser distractions, and you should put the content clearly on the website. Try to stick to standard layouts and design tropes. It is because people love familiarity and can move out of the website by the non-standard site designs. Indeed, website owners love carousels, but they often go ignored like tabs and accordions.
Try to choose the colors on the website strategically. It is because every color has a different emotional connotation. Using colors effectively is an important part of web design. Use a single color for the primary elements, secondary highlights, and background or less important elements. Keep the theme consistent all through the entire website.
Easily navigable site
You will always want your visitors to find what they are looking for easily. A site with solid navigation will also help search engines index your content. Always link your logo to the homepage to save the visitors from precious clicks. Whether you opt for a classic horizontal list or hamburger menu, make sure your website is prominent and easy to find.
If yours is a one-page website, you can use an anchor menu. It will enable the viewers to jump to any section of the site they want quickly. You can also use the ‘Back to Top’ button, which leads visitors to the page’s top from wherever they are on the site.
The website footer is the last thing that one can see on the site. Place links like contact information, social media links, and other related links here.
In this respect, keep site speed an absolute priority. Site speed significantly influences almost everything from bounce rate, user satisfaction, conversions, and revenue. If the site speed is slow, visitors would not like to hang around. Search engines also consider page loading speed as a factor to rank a page. So, it is important to invest in increasing the site speed. Try to prioritize scrolling over clicking. It is because users like scrolling a lot as compared to clicking.
Streamline the website’s navigation to gain positive results. Try to design navigation in a way that is easy for the visitors to use. For this, please find a balance in the number of options. Build your navigation structure so that users think and act while searching the website. Try not to experiment with unusual formats by sticking to the conventions that users already understand. You can go for usual formats like a logo connected with the homepage and a search bar that has a magnifying glass.
Prioritize mobile
Remember, all the site visitors should enjoy your website from whatever device they are browsing. While designing the site, create the site’s mobile-friendly version so that you can keep up with the ever-increasing mobile access. You can take easily check your site’s mobile version by putting yourself in the user’s position.
Your mobile website needs to be less cluttered and cleaner as compared to the desktop version. You can do this by minimizing page elements and scaling down assets like the menu. You can also utilize several unique mobile features that can help you boost your mobile design.
One related way to leverage the website is to implement conformity bias. No doubt, people tend to follow what others do. It means that if a group of people approves or likes something, others are likely to copy the same—one of the ways to do so is to show social proof.
If you can show that others have a positive opinion for your website, product or service, and content, then the chances of having more visitors can increase. You can show counts of social shares, testimonials, and media mentions. For more info about this topic, be sure to also check responsive design vs. adaptive design.
Web Design Tips Conclusion
A good website can help you build your brand, enhance traffic, and earn money. No doubt, fields like color theory, composition, and mobile responsiveness are all in-depth and not easy to understand in one go. However, the above tips and regular practice will help create an extraordinary web design for your site.
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