What are the Basics of a Good Website Design?

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A Good Web Design is one that combines both usability and visual appeal to engage the website audiences. Usability ensures that a website is easy to navigate and allows visitors to find the information with ease. At the same time, Visual appeal creates a design that captures users’ attention and leaves a positive impression.

As the website is the first contact point between a potential customer and a brand, it becomes critical to have a good web design that enhances user experience. An aesthetically pleasing and user-friendly website can contribute to an increase in engagement, conversions, and customer satisfaction.

In this article, you shall explore the secret to having a good web design and the critical insights that will help you create a strong online presence for your website. 

Begin,

What are Some Factors that Affect User Experience?

It will not be wrong here to state that “the role of a good web design is to provide an enhanced user experience to the visitors.” Confusing web design is a big problem when it comes to user experience.

User experience is the feeling one gets while interacting with a website. It includes various aspects such as usability, accessibility, efficiency and emotional appeal.

A positive User experience is one that helps the users find what they are looking for quickly and more effectively. Choosing a good web designer with the right skills and experience for your web design can significantly increase the user experience for your visitors.

What is the Process Involved to Build a Good Website Design?

To build a visually attractive and user-friendly website design consider the following steps:

Step #1: Research and Planning

  • Define project goals and objectives.
  • Identify target audience and competitors.
  • Plan website structure and content.

Step #2: Development

  • Transform design into a functional website.
  • Code using HTML, CSS, and other technologies.
  • Integrate interactive elements and features.

Step #3: Testing

  • Thoroughly check website functionality.
  • Test across various browsers and devices.
  • Identify and fix any issues or bugs.

Step #4: Launch

  • Deploy the website on a live server.
  • Make it accessible to the public.
  • Monitor performance during the launch.

Step #5: Maintenance

  • Continuously update content and features.
  • Fix bugs and address user feedback.
  • Ensure the website remains secure and up-to-date.

web-design-process

Factors to Look Out for in a Good Web Design

Navigation and Site Structure

Navigation refers to a system of buttons, links, menus or other interactive elements that direct users from one web page to another on the same website. A seamless navigation ensures that the users can find information easily and efficiently, which in turn enhances the overall User experience. 

Site structure refers to the order in which the related content of a website is grouped together. A well-structured website will help users to understand the relationship between different sections better and find the information they need quickly.  

some-key-points-about-website-navigation-and-site-structure

Mobile Optimization

With most of the traffic coming from mobile devices in today’s time, it has become crucial to optimize your website for mobile use. You do not want to be stuck with a website that works fine on the desktop version but fails to load on the mobile. To build a website that responds to a range of mobile devices,  switch towards responsive website design.

A responsive design is an approach that enables a website to fit according to the screen size of the users’ devices. It helps to provide a better mobile browsing experience to the users. With responsive design, you achieve maximum visibility to the people using mobile devices. 

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Page Load Speed

The time taken by a web page to fully load its content to a user plays a critical role in deciding whether a user will stay or not. A website that loads slowly is bound to lose the interest of its visitors and also impacts the search engine ranking of the website. You can leverage the metrics of core web vitals to gain insight into your website’s loading speed and improve them to provide a better user experience to the users. Below are some of the ways you can lower the loading speed of your website

  1. Lower the size of the image without affecting its quality.
  2. Minimize the number of redirects on your website, as they take extra time to load.
  3. Use Content Delivery Networks for faster access. 
  4. Minify and combine CSS and JS files to reduce their size.
  5. Use lazy loading to load images or videos when it comes to the viewport of the user. 
  6. Use a faster and more reliable hosting provider for improved server response time.

core-web-vitals-metrics

Accessibility

A good design takes care of all its users, including those with disabilities. It removes barriers and provides an inclusive environment for every user regardless of their physical limitations. To achieve accessibility for all users, implement features that facilitate ease of use for people with disabilities. They are as follows:

1. Alt text for images: This is an HTML attribute that describes the content of the image to the user. People who are visually impaired use screen readers, which read the text provided aloud to the user.

Alt text code for images

<!DOCTYPE html><html><head>

    <title>Alt Text Example</title>

</head>

<body>

    <img src=”example.jpg” alt=”A beautiful sunset over the mountains”>

</body>
In the code above the tag is used to insert an image with the “src” tag pointing to the image file. The “alt” tag describes the content of the image.

 

2. Keyboard Navigation: Some of the users may have difficulty controlling the mouse due to motor disabilities. To help these users access your website, you can implement a keyboard navigation feature.

keyboard-navigation-for-disable-person

Consistency in Design Elements

A Good website design entails a uniform and cohesive appearance of its visual elements across a website. For this, you should aim to use consistent fonts, colours, and buttons for the various sections or pages of the website. A consistent design can help you in the following ways:

1.Brand identity: Consistent web design elements help you to reinforce the image of your brand among your target audiences.

2.User familiarity: When users come across consistent design elements, they become familiar with the layout of your website. This sense of familiarity will allow the users to focus on the content or the task they are looking to perform.

What is the Role of Visual Design? 

The visual design of a website does influence how a user perceives or regards your website. A website with aesthetic and eye-pleasing design can entice the audience to stay longer on your website and carry the desired action. Visual ensign includes elements such as colour, typography, images and more that contribute to the overall look and feel of a website.

Colour Scheme

Colours for visual designs are not just for aesthetic purposes; it influences the behaviour of the users also. Finding out the right colour scheme can help you convey the brand message easily to your potential customers. The impact of colour schemes on the success of a visual design is as follows:

  • Emotional Impact: Different colours can evoke different emotions in users. Colours such as orange or red can trigger a feeling of excitement or passion.
  • Branding: The use of specific colours or combinations on your website can help to reinforce the brand identity and create a familiar online presence.
  • Readability: The colour scheme is crucial for readability. Select a colour scheme that enhances the visibility of the text to provide a better user experience to the users. 

Typography

Typography is an essential aspect of web design that focuses on the visual representation of content on the website. This aspect of visual design helps to enhance user experience and communication. To optimize your web design for typography, consider the following factors:

  • Font selection: Choose a font that aligns with and compliments the overall design of a website. Make sure the content selected is easy to read and comprehend to the users.
  • Font Size: Select a font size that is neither too small, which can strain the eyes, nor too big, which can cause readability issues due to excessive sentence breaks.
  • Line Spacing: Enough spacing between lines prevent text crowding, which in turn makes it easier for users to distinguish the line of text.  

Effective Use of Images and Media

Thoughtful inclusion of images or videos in your website design can enhance communication, engage users, and improve the user experience. The benefits of images and media to the visual design are as follows:

  • Complements content: Strategic use of images or videos can complement the written content highlighting the main ideas or points.
  • User engagement: Visual elements such as images and videos can encourage the users to engage with the content further.
  • Product Showcase: This is especially beneficial for ecommerce websites’ product description pages. Add high-quality images or videos to complement the written product description even further.

Creating Engaging Content

Create content that is relevant and valuable to your target audience. High-quality content has the power to entice your target audience to engage with your website and take the desired action. Consider the following factor while writing content that matches the search need of your users:

  • Compelling headlines: Create headlines that entice the users to read further.
  • Relevant and valuable Information: The content written should be relevant to the users’ interests or needs. It should offer valuable solutions that answer the search query of your audience.
  • Structure: Make your content more engaging to your audience with proper headings, subheadings and bullet points. Also organize the content of your website into short and crisp paragraphs.
  • Organize content with hierarchy: Organize the content of your website in a clear and logical manner in which information is prioritized and categorized with relevant information. 

Implementing Call to Actions

Call-to-action buttons are a powerful tool to encourage users to take specific actions, such as making a purchase or signing up for email notifications. Consider the following points to create CTA content that compels users to take action:

  • Clarity and visibility: The content of the CTA should be short and to the point. Palace your CTA button in a way that is easily noticeable to your target audience.
  • Actionable words: The words used in the CTAs should be able to provoke an action from the users.
  • Relevant to the content: Make sure the content of the CTAs is assigned to the context of the web content. 

Search Engine Optimization and Web Design

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In short, SEO is the process of optimizing your website for user and search engine ranking purposes. SEO and web design are interconnected aspects of creating a website that has the potential to rank high and provide an enhanced user experience to the target audience. Below are some of the key SEO practices that you should look to incorporate into your web design:

Keywords and Content

SEO involves the practice of keyword research to find the exact and related terms or phrases that your target might use to find your product and services. Once you have the right keywords, start incorporating the same into your website’s content in a natural way. Web design, on the other hand, makes sure that your content is presented in a user-friendly format to visitors.

On-page SEO Elements

Elements such as meta tags, headers, and alt text are part of web design. These elements are optimized to provide search engines with valuable information about the content, which improves the potential of a website to rank higher on search engine result pages.

Link Building and Social Sharing

SEO practices often involve the act of acquiring backlinks and social media sharing to increase the visibility of your website online. These practices also increase the trust and credibility factor of your website. Web design can incorporate social media sharing buttons and design elements that encourage link sharing and engagement.

Internal linking

This is the process of linking your related web pages to each other on the same website. It helps establish a hierarchy of importance for content, pass link equity across a site, and help users to discover pages of interest.

Example of a Good Website Design

A good website design encourages the potential customers to explore your website and take the desired action hence maximizing the ROI.

Mixbook Web Design

Mixbook is an online platform that allows users to create personalized photo books, cards and other various photo-based products. Their website is an excellent example of an aesthetically pleasing and user-friendly interface that enhances the overall user experience of the visitors. The sub-navigation in the design allows users to make their way around the website and find what they are looking for.

mixbook-web-design

Wozber Website Design

This is an online platform that offers professional resume templates to help users create professional and effective resumes. Wozber’s homepage clearly outlines the step up front, which is then explained in the single sections below. This site has inculcated some sample resumes that they have made to give an idea to its users of what their resumes could look like.

wozber-website-design

Final Words!!

In the end, optimizing your website for a good web design can help you provide a positive user experience to your site visitors. By implementing the above-discussed fundamental points, you can create a website that engages and is user-friendly. In this ever-changing digital world, staying updated on the users’ preferences and technological advancements is the key to having a strong online presence. If you are looking for a professional agency for web design, consider Kinex Media, as they have been awarded Top Web Designers by Clutch. Regularly update and refine your web design with the latest trends to ensure growth and success.

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