When you are thinking of how to design a website, try to think like your target audience.
How do they approach things, what do they like the most, what is most likely to capture their attention, etc?
When you ask yourself questions like these, you will able to understand your target audience better and can warrant their satisfaction through your website.
For businesses specifically, it becomes a cat-and-mouse chase when they are developing and designing their website and need to come up with a focus-stealing design.
A visitor’s decision to like or dislike a website takes less than 50 milliseconds.- Study by Gitte Lindgaard, Gary Fernandes, Cathy Dudek & J. Brown.
If you are also racking your brain trying to come up with new and unique designs, we have compiled a list of 10 outstanding principles of a good website design that will surely help you:
Grab the Attention
Image-source: glidedesign.com
- It has been observed that some website elements have an upper hand on others and can extremely enhance the overall user experience.
- These elements can vary from text to gifs and video content.
- Depending on the preference of your target audience, the nature of your content can change.
- If you think your target audience would be more attracted to short video content or gifs, you can use them otherwise you can simply go for text or image content.
- Try to use an element that is most likely to hook your users and keep them interested.
- This focal point of your website can be the deciding factor of whether your users want to keep using your website or not.
- When a user arrives at your website, you have a maximum of 3 seconds window to capture their attention.
- This attention can be captured by a link they are searching for, any famous product of yours, or any information that can engage them.
- This short window of time is crucial in instantly grabbing the attention of your visitors.
- If you use just the right element and option on your website, you will be able to succeed in gaining the interest of your customers.
- You can take the help of a website development company in new york to get a better understanding of your target market.
Ease of Navigation
Image-source: glidedesign.com
- The consistent and easy navigation of your website can be the sealing deal for your website visitors.
- When your website page loads easily, all the content is displayed accurately and in no time, the pages inside your website open without any glitches, it all contributes to giving the users an extremely seamless experience.
- This can ensure the satisfaction of your visitors and will provide a good experience for them.
- You can strategically place menu bars, internal searching options, keywords, etc to help your users in getting the best experience possible.
- Great navigation not only assists the users in a good experience but also helps them in finding their way to the different links and content on the website.
- Without good navigation, it will be hard for your visitors to easily find the thing they are searching for.
- Many businesses make the mistake of haphazard placement of content to appear quirky and catchy to their visitors.
- Logically speaking, it harms the experience of the visitors as it fails to provide a coherent and meaningful experience.
Focused & Value Added Content
Image-source: glidedesign.com
- According to the remarkable UX professional, Steve Krug the content on the webs should not make the visitors think but just act.
- The more there is text presented on the web, the more it can confuse and irritate visitors.
- The first law of usability by Steve Krug states that the web page should be self-explanatory.
- Try to keep the content of the website minimal no matter what business you are in.
- A simple website design is more likely to attract your target audience than a complex one.
- Do not confuse your visitors by stuffing your webpage with too much content.
- Instead, focus on the most important and relevant information and display that only.
- When your users visit your website, they should be able to get the relevant information they came looking for.
- Your job here is to remove any question marks between your users and your provided content.
- The structure of your website needs to be intuitive and concrete to ensure an informative experience for the users.
- If your website fails to provide a clear structure, decent visual elements, and interactive links, you will not be able to provide a good user experience.
Creative & Engaging Design
Image-source: glidedesign.com
- Developing a website demands innovation and creativity.
- Every business industry is cluttered with more or less the same content and visuals
- . You need to include something unique and creative to capture the attention of your target audience.
- A quite famous concept in the design world is white space. White space or negative space is the area surrounding the content or visual elements presented on a web.
- This is the empty area that outlines the content displayed on a web, making them more prominent.
- The best website designs have a clever use of white space.
- The previous trends in the design industry heavily involved the use of complicated and bold themes and colors that were hard to capture the attention of the audience.
- Those design layouts were concentrated on stuffing as much content as they possibly could because they worked on a “the more the better” approach.
- But it simply does not work anymore as it does not provide a good user experience.
- The use of white space manages to not only capture the attention of the visitors but also facilitate them having a memorable experience.
Use Writing that Attracts
Image-source: glidedesign.com
- You must recognize that, even if you cater to the same target audience online and offline, your target audience interprets material differently on both channels.
- To attract your target market both offline and online, you need distinct writing styles and strategies.
- You may be able to convince your target audience to buy from you in a physical outlet by sweet talking to them.
- On the other hand, you do not have too much time online to persuade your audience through long marketing speeches.
- For this reason, you need a catchy and short phrase or marketing copy that can immediately catch the attention of your target audience.
- Try to use short phrases and get to the point quickly. Avoid using long and complicated sentences that can frustrate your visitors.
- Use language that is easily understandable by your target audience. Include words and phrases that can point to the burning questions of your users.
Engaging & Attractive Visual Elements
Image-source: glidedesign.com
- In comparison to text, visual elements like images, gifs, and videos are way faster in attracting the attention of users while browsing.
- The use of powerful, intuitive, and informative visuals can explicitly tell your target audience about your brand.
- This will help in effectively delivering your message to your visitors.
- The color theme, design layout, and other visual features of your website all combine to provide a memorable experience to your target audience.
Hierarchical & Well-Structured Content
Image-source: glidedesign.com
- Well-placed content is very important for an informative website.
- If your website does not have clear hierarchies of content and well-defined content, your target audience is most likely to skip.
- The hierarchy of the whole content of your website is crucial here.
- Misplaced and sporadic content can easily drive your target audience away from your website.
- Start with creating a plan about what you think your audience is interested in more.
- Place this content at the very front and top of your website.
- Gradually move down with this approach, placing the most to least informative and engaging topics according to the preference of your target audience.
- You can also use different colors and fonts to further emphasize the hierarchy of your content.
- This hierarchical structure will help your website users effectively absorb the most important and relevant information.
- Also, this will prevent the users from getting unnecessary content that they do not need.
Do not Ask for User Information Too Early
Image-source: glidedesign.com
- Every business website asks for the user’s personal information at some point in time.
- This information is salient because of several different reasons. But many websites commit the foolish mistake of asking for information when the user visits the website for the very first time.
- No user would be comfortable enough during their first visit to your website that they will provide you with their personal information.
- Asking users to fill out a form, and input their age, gender, or financial information can immediately negatively alert them.
- In addition to this, asking users to fill out long forms or subscribe to a website is also a bad practice.
- Your visitors are looking for some information and that is why they have visited your website, let them become familiar with your business and website first.
- If you ask them for personal information or subscriptions, they will immediately leave your website since they do not know or trust you yet.
- In comparison to this, let your visitors roam around your website.
- Once they find relevant information, they are more likely to do your bidding easily. The key here is to be patient with your users and allow them to gain some information about you.
Web Conventions
Image-source: glidedesign.com
- These help in creating an image or template for users so they know what to expect when they visit a particular website.
- Web conventions design feels familiar to users even they are visiting the website for the first time.
- These web conventions provide easy navigation and a seamless experience on the whole.
- When your visitor already knows what they are going to find on the website, they will easily go for their desired information without any hurdle.
- The absorption of information is also easy on these websites for users.
- It is all because this website design follows the industry standards that help in enhancing the usability of the website.
- Since your audience already has visited countless websites, they have created a mental image that will help them in expecting a certain web design.
- When they visit a web convention-friendly website, they expect the same experience they have gained from other websites.
- This way, their experience is more effective and memorable.
Practice: Test Early, Test Often
- The whole process of developing and designing a website will fail if you do not test accurately to find out its usability.
- This principle is called test early, test often, or TETO. By doing this test, you will find out informative insights regarding the usability and utility of your website.
- Your website may be similar to that of your competitors, but to gain a more intimate knowledge of your target audience you need to conduct relevant TETO to get a very specific result.
- The timing of your test is important. Do not test too early that there is not an adequate amount of data for you to make an intelligent conclusion. Also, do not test too late so that there is no time for you to make rectifications.