There are millions of websites and all of them want one thing: more visitors.
With such a tight competition, you’ll want your website to stand out. You can achieve that by making your website worth checking out. Impress them with good visuals and keep them through intuitive web designing.
Not sure how this all works? We’ve listed 7 tips below to help you get started. Read on below to learn more:
1. Visual Hierarchy
Web designing is also about using visual cues to manipulate where visitors look. A photo of a woman looking right and pointing right may direct someone’s vision to the right panel, which is where you’ll want to put your call-to-action or newsletter registration.
Do you want to use a photo as a page’s centerpiece? Make sure the caption text isn’t bigger than the photo.
Understand which visual elements are the most important and then give those the majority of page real estate. Everything should work in tandem instead of trying to steal the spotlight. Work on figuring out which elements should look big, which ones should be smaller, and where you put them and for what purpose.
2. Minimalist
You’ll want website style ideas to help you stand apart from the competition but don’t try to stuff everything together. In today’s world, a minimalist web design works best. It leaves some space for elements on the web page to breathe and stand out.
Use the negative white space to your advantage.
You could leave some space to let a photo ad stand out. You could leave space for people to notice your call-to-action (CTA).
Cluttering too much text or images together only creates a visual mess. Visitors might get lost or even stressed out from the disorder.
3. Mobile Friendly
Did you know 72% of people who go online do so solely on a phone? The age of relying on a desktop computer is in the past. Even Google recognizes the shift and implemented its mobile-first indexing update.
This means Google prioritizes websites with a mobile-friendly design.
Yes, you can make a responsive website with a push of a button on platforms like WordPress but this only covers the layout. You should still think about elements like font size, image compression, and how you format your blog posts.
Does your content feature paragraphs with 5-10 sentences? That might look sparse on a monitor but on a phone, it’ll look like an intimidating wall of text.
4. Intuitive Navigation
Keep this in mind: if it takes your visitors more than 3 clicks to reach any other page, there’s something wrong with your site navigation. Refine it to make it intuitive and easy to get around.
Visitors shouldn’t have to ask customer service or a bot to find content. They shouldn’t get lost looking for a particular blog post, service page, or product.
You can start by turning your logo on the header as an internal link. When people click on it, the header should take them back to the home page. Also, make sure every page has a “back to top” link, especially if there’s a long blog post.
Keep your collapsible menus to a minimum. It gets confusing and frustrating when people have to go through five sub-menus to find a page.
5. Prioritize Speed Too
Speed affects your site’s performance too and you’ll have to work around your web design to achieve faster loading goals.
Most people leave a page if it takes more than a few seconds to load. Remember that they with enough digging, they may find a site with similar content to yours and that site might load faster. Always consider their time and convenience.
Don’t know how to design a website that prioritizes speed? Start by using tools or plugins to compress images without ruining their quality. Remove all elements that slow down a page, such as Flash animation or a splash page.
Yes, web design is mostly a visual process but experts also need to dive into the coding too. Clean up your code — too many comments, redundancies, and unnecessary lines could make the page slower.
6. Social Icons
When designing a website, you’ll want to leave a spot for social icons. These serve as visual links to bring visitors to your Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter pages.
However, don’t simply drop them wherever you feel like it.
If you put your social icons on your header, they’ll always appear as distractions. People might click on them, go to Facebook, and then spend hours on social media before they remember what they meant to do on your site.
Don’t give them an opportunity or reason to leave your site! You need to advertise your social media pages but put those icons somewhere else. Placing them to the site or on your footer serves a better purpose.
7. Accessibility
Do you want more people to visit your site? One of the most overlooked web design tips is to emphasize accessibility.
Start by adding options for people with vision disabilities, such as color blindness. You can add a text-to-speech option for the blind. Use fonts that appeal to people with dyslexia.
Make sure your site also works for people who can’t use a mouse.
Don’t forget to test your site’s design on a phone too. You’ll want to check if the links are too close, if images overlap with text, and if the font and background color contrast well enough.
Not sure if your site features all the accessibility features needed? Conduct an A/B split test and invite a few people to navigate around your website. Get their feedback and improve on areas they point out.
Master These Web Designing Tips Now
Web designing doesn’t have to seem like a daunting task. Simply refer back to these tips here and you’ll be on the right track. Always prioritize good UX and you’ll manage to keep visitors in.
Of course, running a site doesn’t end with a good design. If you want to continue reading more useful guides like this, check out our other articles right here!