To pull off a great website is a challenge for every business. You have to come up with incredible ideas to keep users hooked onto your pages.
Do you know that you have only a few seconds to grab the user’s attention before they decide to leave or stay?
Experts recommend that you must communicate your value proposition, and prove the efficacy of your portal within the first 10 seconds. And generally, an average visit on a website lasts less than a minute. If you grab attention of visitors on the first strike, you can potentially gain and retain customers for life.
Ultimately, it all begins with web design. The way you offer visual content, articulate text, and the overall user experience determines how potential customers feel about you. The design is, therefore, directly linked to the conversion rate. Studies show that almost 75% of the visitors judge businesses by their design.
So, let’s talk about the basics required for brilliant website design:
Plan for a balanced design
Balancing a design is about ensuring that it does not prioritize only a few aspects and undermines others. It has to be symmetrical. The design will certainly lose the balance if you don’t pay attention to the layout.
You can manipulate the visual weight of the design by modifying colors, size or addition, and removal of elements. Techniques of visual hierarchy will guide the users to focus on important elements first. Break up of text and image sizes will lead a customer towards calls to action.
Achieving asymmetrical balance through each of the pages is quite tricky. It takes time to fine-tune the layout which is why you must hire a professional ecommerce web design agency to handle your platform.
Check readability score
Readability determines the ease that people have when going through the words, phrases, and sentences. When the readability score of your website goes up, it proves that users can scan and take in the information without any troubles.
Remember the following key rules when working on readability:
- The color contrast between the text and background should be pleasant. Feel free to try different colors but do not compromise readability while doing so.
- When people have to struggle reading small fonts, they may bounce off the page immediately. A thumb rule is to use at least 16 pt font. However, another factor that counts is the type of font you use.
- Font combinations need extra care. You should not use more than three different fonts through a single website. But if the design demands for it, then make sure the combination is harmonious, not haphazard.
Align the graphics
Fancy graphics are not a necessity for a great website yet the poor choice of graphics is going to belittle the design. You do not have to be a professional illustrator or graphic designer to put together a graphic; combination on your website.
Bring your basic Photoshop skills into action. Try to make the graphics blend well with each other and scrutinize if it embodies that style you are aiming for.
Work on easy navigation
Good website design is beyond trendy logos and slick interfaces. It is about having zero navigation issues, compliant code, and limited technical glitches. Visitors do not love to go on a wild goose hunt when wandering online.
A solid navigation system shall index your content on search engines and improve the users’ experience:
- Link the logo to your landing page
- Menu structure should be according to the website
- Position important content above the fold
- Place important links at the footer. Like social icons, a shorter version of the menu, etc.
Integrate social sharing options
Producing great content serves a limited purpose if the audience does not have any avenue to share it. Social sharing buttons are the small icons of different websites. These allow you and the visitors to share the page directly on any social media channel.
It offers a traffic boost to your website. Integrating these into your design is highly beneficial.
Effective use of white spaces
White spaces give breathing room to the text and spatial peace. When white space covers an image or text, they stand out better. Some design experts believe that it adds a class to the design.
Inexperienced designers tend to cover the entire space. They fail to understand that design is only about getting your message across. Adding noise to it will result in fading of the original message.
Thus, white space may seem superfluous, but it is responsible for content prioritization.
Optimize for mobiles
The ownership of smartphones is increasing globally. Google says “61% of users are unlikely to return to a mobile site they had trouble accessing and 40% visit a competitor’s site instead.”
To stick to the trends, analyze your current state of mobile optimization. Put yourself in the user’s shoe and test out every page. Check the placement of user actions and buttons. If you find any weaknesses, seek to achieve a seamless mobile website by hiring professional services.
Relate with the customers
A close connection with the site visitors will turn them into permanent customers if you play your cards right. Make the customers feel that you completely understand their pain points. Then explain how their issues can sort out.
Instead of constantly focusing on how great your company and its products are, establish direct contact with the users. This asks for a grammatical switch. It will help to change the way customers feel about your business.
With plenty of content management systems, themes and blogging tools readily available, it has become quite easy to design your website. But mastering it all and securing top position on the grid is not as easy as it sounds. Changing user preferences, increasing competition, and updating Google algorithms are some roadblocks that every website has to go through.
Lastly, your content and products should also be up to industrial standards. If not, the negative online reviews will automatically cut your sales despite having an excellent design in place.
About the Author:
Alma Causey is a Freelance writer by day and sports fan by night. She writes about tech education and health related issues. Live simply, give generously, watch football and a technology lover.
