Website design is a mixture of functionality and creativity. To create a user friendly and visually appealing website requires an experienced designer that uses the best practices to ensure the best end results.
What Are the Best Practices for Web Design?
When it comes to designing a professional, user friendly, and visually appealing website, there are some best practices to bear in mind:
Visual Consistency
The layout, colour scheme, images, and fonts, should be consistent, providing visitors with comfort, enabling them to focus on the product, service, or information they are looking for. Consistency defines your brand identify. When you are consistent throughout your website, it offers familiarity and trust.
Tips for Visual Consistency include:
- Choose a colour palette – choose a colour palette and stick to it throughout your website and off site marketing platforms, such as social media. Choose a maximum of five colours that work together, reflecting your brand.
- Limit the number of fonts – you should use no more than two fonts across your website. Any chosen fonts must be easy to read and align with your brand style.
- Images – choose images with care. Images should show your brand style and personality.
Strategically Arrange Content
Another best practice when it comes to web design in 2024 is to ensure that you strategically arrange your content based on significance and important, creating a visual flow. This means that visitors that do not have the time to read every single word, still capture the important details.
Tips for Strategically Arranging Content include:
- Identify your Goals – You need to define your goals and rank them based on importance. The content should be arranged to align with the ranking
- Important Content at the Top – The top of the page, above the fold, should set the expectation for the rest of the page. Content at the top of a page has a higher chance of catching your visitors attention
- Use Visual Cues – In addition to your website layout, web designers use visual elements to make your sites strategically arranged content obvious. Headers are useful in your website structure. You can use colour to add focal points.
Leave Plenty of White Space
A cluttered space is never welcoming, it distracts and overwhelms the visitor. The same applies with your website. A cluttered website will have a negative impact on visitors. Ensure that you have plenty of white space on your website, this reduces the visual noise, enabling the visitor to focus on what they are on the page for in the first place.
Tips to Improve White Space include:
- Group content – white space is valuable when grouping content, helping visitors quickly identify what is relevant and what is not on your page.
- Use a Grid-Based Layout – this is essential for a modern web design, ensuring that white space is distributed on the web page.
- Set Margins – by setting margins you help to balance the design of your website. Set margins around content, ensuring the relevant content is showcased.
Make Navigation Seamless
Users make decisions based on how websites functioned when they visited them the last time. Users today expect a seamless interaction with your website, along with fast loading website pages. Seamless navigation, ensures visitors can find the products, services, or information they are looking for.
Tips to improve navigation include:
- 3 Click Rule – define the goals of your visitors before you design your website. Use the 3 click rule to ensure visitors can achieve goals without difficult navigation.
- Lay Down Breadcrumbs – Use internal links to ensure your visitors don't get lost among your website pages. This helps create a navigational path, making it easier to get the information they need.
- Save on Screen Place – optimising your website for mobile, means your website header is simply your logo and three horizontal lines, stacked on top of each other. This helps to hide menus, saving on screen space, and providing easy access to navigational options.
Conclusion
Follow the above best practices for web design to create a visually appealing, informative, and easy to navigate website. Helping to reduce bounce rate, improve user experience, and improve your conversions.