Web design of the highest quality is an essential component of the success of any company’s website. Visitors will glean security, authority and trust just from the way your website is presented. If you make a website that takes an age to load up, has a navigation bar that is difficult to follow, you may end up losing a lot of potential buyers.
Most consumers today have very little time to spend on poorly designed sites. There are so many new websites entering the scene every single day, which is why it’s important your site is up to par, as your competitor is only a click or two away.
A web designers primary goal is to combine excellent designs with authority and functionality, while ensuring site visitors are able to easily find whatever it is they are looking for.
So what are the things that can be done to achieve this? And what are the things that separate a good site from a poor one?
Well, it all starts with the fundamentals, they must be in place – but the reality is, that they are oftentimes overlooked.
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1. Simple Navigation
A site navigation that is complex can be quite frustrating to the average visitor, as it makes getting through the site a much more arduous task. A navigation that is simple, is one that is easy to identify, intuitive, and shouldn’t overwhelm with too many links and options to different content on the site.
A simple navigation should be the basis of any
build. You want your navigation to provide the visitor with a few essential things these are: An understanding of where they are on the site, a means of going back, and information on what else is available on the site.
A simple navigation should also include things like how users scroll. For example, parallax scrolling websites, will usually provide the visitor with arrows that makes the entire experience more user friendly. The easier you make it for people to navigate through the site, the longer they will remain on it.
2. Lots of White Space
This should accompany the first modern designed element, as white space, when done right can be very attractive. The truth is, that it doesn’t really have to be white.
White space is simply a term used to describe the empty spaces on your site, which usually acts as a buffer between the different site elements. Such as the sidebar, content, page, margins etc. You want your site to be very spacious, as this will prevent it from looking crowded and cluttered. If you put all the different elements too close together, it can make it difficult to draw the visitor’s attention to any one place on the site.
There are many site themes that you can invest in that use whitespace in a very pleasing manner.
Thus, when designing your website, you want to do with white space in mind, as it will ensure a clean, organised and easily digestible design. Web design nowadays is moving more and more towards minimalism, which is why having white space on your page, will ensure your site design is more consistent with everything else that’s already out there. It also ensures that visitors will have little difficulty getting around the website.
3. Information Accessibility
A large percentage of the visitors to your site, will either not have the time or not have the interest in perusing the entirety of your website. They may just be looking for an address or a phone number, or a little bit of information. For this reason, you want to ensure that all key information is strategically positioned, in plain sight. A location that is easy to access.
If you’ve been surfing the web for any real length of time, then it’s likely you’ve experienced visiting a site and not being able to find the information that you need on it. This can be very frustrating, not just for you but for visitors in general. You’re objective is not to annoy your visitors, as they, in most cases, will leave your site, likely to never return – and that’s business lost for you.
4. Mobile-Friendly Design
When it comes to the major search engines, mobile-first is now a thing.
Surfing the web is becoming more and more of a mobile thing, meaning, a website that’s not mobile-friendly, is one that’s destined to fail. Most people who surf the internet, do so on their mobile devices, and this is a trend that is only set to widen.
You want your website to perform equally on all the various platforms it’s visible on. While the vast majority of WordPress based themes are mobile-ready, if you go with a custom design, then you’ll need to ensure that it’s responsive, meaning, it adapts to the site of the screen it’s being viewed on. Alternatively, you could simply create a mobile version of your site, and set your website so that it shows the appropriate version depending on the device the end user is surfing the web on.
5. SEO Elements
While it’s important you design your website with the user in mind, that doesn’t mean SEO isn’t a factor in that.
There are a number of design elements that when implemented will improve the search engine optimisation (SEO) of the website. Many of these elements may even be invisible, appearing only in the backend coding of the page.
Various design tricks such as title tags, META tags, heading tags and other HTML code goes a long way in helping your website to rank higher in the major search engines.
Make sure all of these different elements are covered, so that the search engines not only pick up your site, but also rank it higher, based on it.
6. Great Visuals
Most visitors love the visual cues. When done correctly, they can be most engaging, helping to draw the visitor’s attention to specific elements on the page. Whether you decide to go with illustrations or high quality images, whatever you use, should give the user a general feel of your style and/or product.
Visuals, in most cases are used to draw the attention to specific areas of a page, this ensures that the visitor will look where you want them to look. If you have an ad banner for example, which is visually appealing, this should immediately draw people’s attention. While, you can add custom images through your sites pages, as a guide to where to look to find the information they desire.
–AUTHOR INFO—
Uchenna Ani-Okoye is a former IT Manager who now runs his own computer support website compuchenna