A website is considered to be the face of any business and potential clients or customers will always first look into the website of any company before moving forward with them. A website’s success largely depends on its design. Web design should not only be visually appealing but it must make your website usable. It has been seen that even a very simple-looking web page with a focus on usability ranks well on Google. A well-planned and structured web design has been seen to help with the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) of the website. This article will outline the 8 elements needed for a good web design:
- Colour Palette
One of the most vital features in web design today, is the colour scheme of the website. This is what attracts users to your website.Using the perfect color combination helps you convey what your company stands for and makes your website look cohesive. You can start with choosing the primary and secondary colours for your website and then design other website elements such as, such as the homepage, blogs, landing page, etc around this colour scheme. It is also important to note that while colours are important you should strive for a balanced look. The best example of balance can be seen on the Apple website which uses the classic black and white combination without complicating their web design with multiple colour schemes.
- Relevant Calls to Action (CTAS)
One of the key reasons a company or business has a website is so that they can convert the visitors into customers. A website is a means through which this connection takes place. A Call to Action (CTA)is a tool by which a visitor or reader is prompted to take action and helps the business in developing a relationship with the customer. A few great examples of CTAS are “Download our Free E-book”, “Sign up for your Newsletter”, “Add to Cart” or “Register Now” or any other type of invites. It is also very essential to place these CTAS in optimal positions on the web page, such as at the end of a blog post, on the resources page, the website landing page, or in the sidebars.
- Speed
While, the competition in the market is high today, the patience of internet users has become extremely low. If a website takes too long to load, then the user will simply move onto the next website offering the same services or products as you. Hence it is extremely important to optimize the speed of the website and you should never overlook this as it may end up costing you a potential customer, plus it also reflects badly on the brand in case the website is slow. To improve your website load speed, you can optimise the image sizes and also combine your code into a Javascript or a central CSS file as this will reduce HTTP requests. To implement these suggestions to improve your website’s load speed you can avail web design services from a web development company.
- Mobile- Phone Compatibility
Nowadays, almost everyone has a smartphone and hence 52% of the traffic on the internet comes from mobile devices. You might just end up losing your customers to your competitors if your website is not compatible with mobile devices. It is important that your website layout easily adapts to suit the dimensions of a mobile device. It is clear that search engines like Google value websites that are designed for mobile devices as well as websites. It not, google can penalise your website by 30%.
- Typography and Readability
Search engine crawlers determine how well your website is optimised. It’s important to make sure that your website content is readable and appealing to your end-users as well as these search engine crawlers. You should also include keywords in your content and add meta descriptions for every page on your website. Google as well as your end-users should be able to get their desired information from your website. A tip in this regard are using fonts that the user will find easy to read and also consider using fonts such as Ariel or Times New Roman.
- Navigation
Visitors or users are more likely to stay on your website when they are able to easily navigate it by themselves. The aim of any web page should be helping users resolve their queries and find valuable information within three clicks.Web designers should focus on making sure there is a logical hierarchy to the web page.
- Clean Back-end Coding
When we talk about the functionality of any webpage, this element is very important and often overlooked by many. Just like in any other website, yours will also have a lot of coding behind it that dictates the performance of your website. If you don’t clean backend coding, then it becomes that much harder to locate and then fix any problems that arise. You can think of this as a pile of junk that after a while starts to collect in the back of your cupboard if left uncleaned.
- Whitespace
When talking about “whitespace” we don’t literally mean white space. It is a term used to refer to the “empty” space which acts as a buffer for the different elements on your website. Your website should not be overcrowded with different elements and features as it can distract your customers, there must be some breathing space in between. White space gives your website a clean design and helps with the organisation of your website. Without white space your website content will not get highlighted for your visitors to see and read.
The end goal in any web design is to prioritize user experience and one can do that by following these 8 key elements. These tips and tricks will help any business be able to convert users or visitors on their website into customers. Optimization of both, functionality, as well as visual design, is important for the website to do well and succeed.
