Some Important Guidelines for An Effective Website Design

We have been talking about websites and website design from the very start, from building a good website to other related topics in order to achieve the best website. Let’s recall the purpose of having a website first before we proceed. Shall we?

The purpose of a website is to convert site visits into potential leads. And the best way to do this is to identify the major user types visiting your site, talk to their needs and give them a clear action step to move to the next level. Whatever your goal is, you should always remember the purpose or you will lose your prospects.

The following are a few guidelines which I can extend to you so you could at least have ideas on how to make your website effective and successful.

Guidelines:

1.Simple and Abundant

There is a saying that the simpler, the better. This is appropriate for this number 1 guideline. Simplicity is beauty, isn’t it? That’s how you should show off the beauty of your website. Make it catchy, edgy and pleasing to the eye. The less you make it more decorated the better. Simple fonts, colors, contrasting, message and contents must reflect your branding. They should have only one color and pattern language.

Putting on some clickable option to only have less. Do not overwhelm your visitors. Avoid anything that is annoying or else you lose potential customers who are already interested in you in the first three (3) seconds. Maintain that impression longer and longer by having a simple looking website with an abundance of information.

A simple message or text on your website but is informative, can already challenge your visitors’ idea of what you are offering and what you can offer more. Trigger a visitors interest by having an inviting website. Simple yet easier to navigate.

2.Seeing is believing

The first 3-seconds matter. Make it worth your visitors’ while. If you can convince a visitor to stay on your website and do more navigation, it means your site is convincing and interesting. These interests will trigger him to act on pointers towards conversion such as your CTAs (Call-To-Action) buttons.

Pay attention to your logos, your products or services’ main images, your menus, your resolution, and how you incorporate everything from texts to images to contents.  Always take note of a professional-looking website. It should be a high-quality website.

Make your website believable.

3.Virtually appealing and communicating

There are 6 important aesthetic qualities for effective website design:

1. Colors

   One of the most powerful subliminal visual tools is the deliberate use of color to influence the user experience on a website.

2. Textual Contents

   a website needs to be populated with relevant, keyword-rich content. Use headings and subheadings (H1s, H2s, H3s, etc.) to organize the text and allow easy visual scanning. Use bold face and anchor text (intrasite links) to communicate important concepts. If your subject matter is complex, provide a glossary and link key terms to it frequently, so you don’t have to define concepts repeatedly on a page.

3. Images

   A picture tells a thousand words. But the wrong picture is a waste of precious real estate. Whether you use photography, diagrams or illustrations, be sure to select imagery that will be appealing to your audience and is also relevant and truly adds value to your message.

4. Navigation

   Make it easy for visitors to find what they are looking for. Give them multiple vehicles for accessing information. Provide a Search function, side navigation categories, footer navigation text links, top navigation buttons or tabs, whatever will make it utterly seamless for a user to move around your site, no matter where they start. Remember a website is not a linear thing. A new site visitor may land first on your home page, or on a product page buried deep within your site.

5. Alignment

   Elements of your site should be visually connected and balanced. Stick to a limited number of page treatments; fewer if your site is small, more for larger sites composed of multiple content types. A page that is frenetic and chaotic will have a much higher bounce rate. A page with a clarity of message, cleanly aligned visual elements and a clear call to action will have a higher conversion rate.

6. White Space

   White space is an often undervalued commodity. But it’s a concept used throughout design and aesthetics. Think of it as a breathing room. It’s like listening instead of always talking. It’s a welcome break on a busy day. It will allow your visitors to focus on what’s important. If every pixel is vying for your visitors’ attention, you will never get your key message across.

4.Look familiar

People like unique looking things around the internet. The prettier looking you are the better. Beauty is perfection on the internet. That is a fact. So if beauty looks familiar to visitors, be very familiar then.

Have a website which can look attractive and clickable. Upon visitors’ navigation, become more beautiful and familiar so that the visitors won’t have difficulty in understanding your site’s navigation.

Be readable and be clickable. Make your LEARN MORE, READ MORE, ADD TO CART, CLICK HERE etc… as is. Avoid using words which are too high in vocabularies that could drive annoyance to your visitors. Remember rule number 1. Keep it simple. But in this step, become more beautiful as the visitor progresses the navigation.

5.Trust and Comfort

A reliable website is what visitors love. They are most likely to convert into raving customers because of comfort and trust. Consistency in your menu bar across the top of each page of your site, Sticking to your branding such as colors are fonts, and image styles can keep your visitors get an idea of what you offer and who you are looking for. This in particular can already keep them comfortable.

Becoming consistent in your branding or even in your rebranding can possibly maximize conversions.

6.Streamlined

A streamlined website is smooth and sleek. It means you have a neat and well-organized website. Your menu bar, status bar, buttons, images, text and colors, the ads, the announcements, and contents in each page are put well into their respective places.

Also keep an eye on the sizes of your texts and how you make emphasis on each of your messages, as well as your images and how you lay them all out in your website. These will give an impression on your visitors to what kind of website you have. If your website is cluttered, don’t expect visitors to stay in navigation. Always remember that the very first thing you should target as a website designer is the eyes of the visitors.

7.Take Note of User Experience (UX)!

While first impressions, last. Take note on how to make those impressions stay.

A successful website depends on how it was designed. It is always about what you see and what you can get. The beauty and functionality.

Make user experience as seamless as possible. It means make it flawless so the customer will click the CTAs most especially. If the users experience satisfying information on your website, they will come back and get more information again and eventually convert. Make everything easy to find. Lastly, always check your links regularly. Make sure everything works, clickable and show up accordingly.

8.Need for speed

Time is gold. Time is precious. Yes, it is. What you should also note is that visitors are impatient, and speed is crucial in your website, especially if the visitor is located in an area with a very good signal. If your website loads like forever, chances are no visitors will stay, more so, no conversion will happen.

To help you speed up your website, note that videos and images can drag your loading time.

Optimize image and videos sizes on your site. As much as possible avoid large files. Making landing page redirects cacheable is another tactic that may improve your website’s load time. If these tips fail on your part, I think you need to upgrade your servers.

Lastly, always keep a focus on mobile users. You should load faster in mobiles.

9.Accessibility

As mentioned in #8, you have to give focus on mobile users. Why?

It is given that almost everyone in the world, especially dealing with business and a huge number of professionals can access the internet using their phones.

In fact, according to Statista, last 2018, 52.2% of all website traffic across the globe came from mobile usage. Be a mobile-friendly kind of website.  You can set and create mobile versions of your website, or simply utilize a website layout that adjusts to different screen sizes automatically. This is available in WordPress. So in this building your website design using WordPress, you will have no difficulty in adjusting your accessibility in mobile, desktop and Laptop.

10.Optimization

A certain website needs constant optimization. It should always be checked when it comes to its consistency and user-friendly. That’s why most websites have strong maintenance support.

You may ask some friends or family members to help you keep track on your website. People who can give your strong feedback in order for you to have the best adjustment you can do to your website and make it more interactive to improve your website’s user experience.

Many third-party sites also offer heat maps you can install to see which parts of your website visitors interact with the most. This will give you a good idea if people are focusing too much on unimportant details of the site and getting distracted from main conversion points.

When testing your website for optimization purposes, remember to view it from multiple different devices, browsers, and operating systems. You want to make sure your site runs properly no matter how visitors are accessing it.

Also, keep in mind that optimization is not a one and done activity. The world of web design changes constantly. You must consistently be updating your website with new information to keep it up-to-date.

If you need a helping hand in building your website and managing your business, send us a message.