Creating a beautiful website is simple. Just sign up for one of the many free website builders and you can create a site with a sophisticated web design in minutes. While the website may look good, it could be far from functional and may not fully suit your needs.
A generic and uncoordinated website that is not designed with a specific end user in mind wouldn’t be effective web design. Effective web design is determined by the experience of the user and the website.
This includes a lot of elements in website design that go beyond simple aesthetics. Good web design is also about the usefulness of your website.
Your site is the face of your business and the first place many potential customers will visit, so you’d want it to give a positive impression of who you are and what you value.
In addition, poorly designed websites have a bad track record on Google, especially due to their high bounce and low conversion rates.
Below we’ve mentioned the top six principles of good web design, so you can ensure that your website makes the right impression on your customers!
1. Simplicity is Key
An over-designed website may not work. Putting too many elements on the page may lead to distracting visitors from the main purpose of your website. Simplicity always works best for effective web page design.
A clean and fresh design of your website not only makes the website look more appealing but also helps the user navigate from one page to another seamlessly.
Crowded websites just don’t work. When there are too many elements on one page, it only leads to distraction and confusion. Loading a website that has design features that do not serve the purpose can also be very frustrating!
Keep your design as simple as possible so that the visitors can feel it is easy-to-use and can find their way easily around it.
2. Ease of Navigation
Ease of navigation is the key to keeping visitors browsing your website. If your website navigation confuses them, then they may just give up and look elsewhere for what they need. Therefore, it’s imperative to keep navigation simple, intuitive and consistent across all pages.
Simple navigation includes a simple menu layout and the ability to move quickly and smoothly between sites.
A few tips to have in mind would be to keep the navigation bar as simple as possible with minimal options, lessen drop-down menu options and avoid having too many clickable links within the website.
3. Consistency
Consistency in website design is very important. Be careful to match design elements throughout each page. It should be noted that the font, size, title, subtitle and style of the buttons should remain the same throughout the website.
Plan everything in advance. Finalise fonts and appropriate colours for text or buttons, etc. so you can stick to them throughout development!
It may not seem so, but colour has the power to convey a message and evoke an emotional response. It can influence the behaviour of customers towards your brand so finding the right colour palette is essential to leaving a good impact on visitors.
Additionally, all images used should be expressive, capture the spirit of the company and serve as a manifestation of the brand’s personality.
4. Fast performance is a must!
The operation of your website must be smooth and effortless. If its performance is too slow, it will have a bad influence on your business and users can stop using the website.
The problem is that, with less time and more choice, not many people will be willing to wait if a website doesn’t load almost instantly. Thankfully, there is no shortage of tools and tricks that designers and website owners can use to improve site load times to meet the expectations of these users.
The best way to improve the load time of pages is to optimize the size of any images and combine the code with a central CSS or JavaScript file. Improving speed and performance is a recurring problem, so you should use Google PageSpeed Checker to track changes.
5. Communication
The ultimate goal of website visitors is to get information.
If your website can communicate effectively with visitors, they are likely to spend more time on your website.
Establish easy communication with visitors by organizing your information: make use of headlines and subtitles; cutting out the waffle; and using bullet points instead of long sentences.
This will improve your website because users are looking for information quickly, regardless of the medium, the message should be clear and easily digestible.
As you can see, improving the communication of a website does not necessarily add information. The best websites understand what you need in as few words and elements as possible.
6. Mobile Friendly
Responsive design used to be optional for effective web design.
Nowadays, if your website is not available on various devices and various screen sizes, not only will it be difficult for you to attract users, but it will also be difficult for you to rank well on Google.
To make your website mobile friendly, the easiest starting point is to start from scratch and rebuild it with responsive design. Otherwise, you can create a dedicated mobile site that is independent of the main site and optimized for mobile device users.
With the increasing use of smartphones, tablets and now phablet phones, it is necessary to make your website suitable for mobile device users. If your website design doesn’t support all screen sizes, you are likely to lose out to your competitors.
There are many web design studios or service points from which you can transform your desktop layout into a receptive design that accommodates all screen sizes.
To wrap up
With the help of these principles, you can easily develop a user-friendly and functional website. Without these basics, developing a nice and intuitive website can be certainly difficult.
If you need help implementing these principles, then Floodmaker are here to help you to improve your website and get it to the top of the search pages!