In the present times, having just a website does not mean you have established presence online. It takes a lot of behind-the-scenes effort to come up with a website that makes your business click. Prioritizing website design then becomes the most practical step for a business owner. It has to be remembered that all your web activities stem from your website. Getting a well-executed website in place makes you ready to embark on your digital marketing efforts. Here we will look into design aspects that make for good website design.
Purpose of the Website: The fundamental reason to build a website reaching out to your target audience. However, what you offer in terms of outreach can vary. It can be about explaining expertise, building a reputation, creating leads, sales and customer care. Your purpose can vary, but the website has to clearly spell out the reason behind its creation. This applies to all web-pages on the website. If there is ambiguity, the chances of retaining audience and attracting new users will not materialize.
The Overall Look: While ideating to build a new website, it has to be remembered that a simple design has the best shot to succeed in the long-term. Simplicity in design is steered by three aspects:
- Colour: The colours used on a website helps better communication and can trigger emotions among users. Being consistent with specific colours helps create a lasting impression and can influence user behaviour. Choose complementary colours and pleasing colour combinations to sustain user engagement.
- Typeface or Fonts: Stick to a maximum of 3-fonts on a website to reduce the clutter that comes along with multiple typefaces. The typefaces are utilized to interpret the brand messaging and wrong choices can be detrimental to the brand. The most favoured fonts happen to be Arial and Verdana among major websites. Stylish fonts enhance aesthetics but do not compensate for poor readability.
- Imagery: The first impressions on a website are conveyed through imagery. It has to represent the brand and capture the principles of the company. This includes pictures, illustration, video and graphics. To project qualities of professionalism and credibility use high-quality imagery, anything less tends to offset all efforts.
Navigation Experience: Rule of thumb for good navigation is governed by three words - simple, intuitive and consistent. If your website comes-up short on these, it means there are bottlenecks to finding relevant information. Include logical page hierarchy, bread crumbs and clickable buttons to improve navigation. Stick to the “three-click” rule that limits the number of clicks to 3 for finding any information on the website. Retaining users with low bounce rates need to be the utmost criteria while designing navigation on a website.
“F” Shaped Content: Studies have shown that users on a website read from the top and proceed from left to right. Most users that come on the website ‘scan’ rather than read while searching for relevant text or specific information. This form an F-shaped pattern and mimics our reading pattern when it comes to English. Website designers who understand this provide instant gratification by delivering on user expectations. This translates to lesser cognitive load and more aligned with the intuition of the user. Designers who are attuned to such scientific principles
Effective Content: A good website would be an ideal combination of content and imagery. Make use of compelling writing to attract regular visitors, who in turn would become paying customers. Engage with the audience in a professional manner by not being pompous about what you have to offer. It needs to be a transactional engagement, where a solution is being offered to an existing problem. Instead, if you indulge in clever lines and load the content with jargon & technical writing, you would make no impact whatsoever. Intelligent writing involves scripting the message around the audience to persuade them to take action. Grid-Based Layout: The end goal of a web designer is to have all elements on the final product to look neat and visually appealing. One of the ways to do this is to adopt a grid-based layout to arrange content into columns and sections that line-up elements geometrically and keeps it clean. When there is a range of elements that need to be accommodated on the web-page this tried and tested approach takes care of the aesthetics. Aim for Simplicity: Visitors to a website are not there to appreciate the content nor are they enamoured by the design of the website. Their goal is to search for relevant information that matters to them. In the larger scheme of things - keeping it simple and avoiding design complexities is a primary guideline that can be adhered to. Always remember the 80-20 rule of sticking to 20% elements on the website to deliver 80% of the usefulness. This would take care of all the distracting elements that might alienate the audience. Embrace the White Space: Do not underestimate the importance of white space on a web page. Not only does it reduce the cognitive load, but also reduces the monotony of heavy text. The important aspect to understand here is that white space helps the audience to break information into digestible bits that make for easy assimilation. If the information is complex and requires a sizable amount of text. Whitespace makes for the best option. Besides visual hierarchy in your design framework through white space would help reduce inherent complexities within the content. Limit to Conventions: Sticking with a conventional design will save your users time and effort and figuring out the way a website has been set up. The conventional layout of a website aligns with user expectations and builds on trust, reliability and credibility. This can be synonymous with data arrangement on computers or product placement in supermarket aisles. There is a certain order to the arrangement which makes it easy for the user. Breaking the norm works when there is a better idea that improves efficiency. Otherwise, taking advantage of established conventions seems wiser. Test Before Use: Usability tests on a website provides crucial insights into problems related to the layout of a website. Testing is not a one-off process rather it is an ongoing process that can be accomplished in cycles with each round revealing a different aspect to be fixed. In addition, it is ideal if the designer himself does not test, rather hands it over to someone outside the team to bring in a fresh perspective. Although testing is appreciated as a good practice, it is not followed in principle. By correcting the bug in the coding stage is inexpensive compared to fixing it after making the website live. Conclusion: Lastly, remember the primary reason for having a website is to attract prospects and customers. Your website is the linchpin around which your digital marketing ideas get created and launched. Accordingly, it becomes essential to not forget the big picture while dealing with the fine details of a website. An ideal situation is where you are aware of the macro-view while you pay attention to the micro-view and vice-versa. This kind of vision would shape the website into an indispensable tool fulfilling your business goals. -------Sujit Susheelan
No comments:
Post a Comment