SUCCESSFUL WEBSITE DESIGN

   

A website is the center of your marketing world. It’s a place where people can visit your business 24 hours/day to learn about the services you provide. Having a website allows consumers to get involved with your business at any time and even when they are on the go. Below are a few tips on how to create a successful website design.

Purpose

 A good design always caters to the needs of the user. Each page of your website needs to have a clear purpose. “Who i am”, “what i do”, and or “what can you (the visitor) do here”.

Communication

People on the web tend to want information quickly, so it is important to communicate clearly, and make your information easy to read and digest. Some effective tactics to include in your web design include: organising information using headlines and subheadlines, using bullet points instead of long windy sentences.

Color and Typeface

 The kind of typeface used is really important, the ideal font size for reading easily online is 16 px. Try to stick to only 3 typefaces in a maximum of 3 point sizes to keep your website design organized. Make sure the colors and fonts you use are easy to read and your information architecture uses subheadings to logically outline your content. The use of negative space allows your site to have a modern and uncluttered look so keep that in mind.

Images

Choosing the right images for your website can help with brand positioning and connecting with your target audience. Consider using infographics, these can be more effective at communicating than even the most well written text.

Navigation

Navigation is about how easy it is for people to take action and move around your website. Some tactics for effective navigation include a logical page hierarchy, using bread crumbs, designing clickable buttons, and following the ‘three click rule’ which means users will be able to find the information they are looking for within three clicks.

Load Time

Everybody hates a website that takes ages to load.  Tips to make page load times more effective include optimising image sizes (size and scale), combining code into a central CSS or JavaScript file (this reduces HTTP requests) and minify HTML, CSS, JavaScript (compressed to speed up their load time).

Mobile Friendly

 It is now commonplace to access websites from multiple devices with multiple screen sizes, so it is important to consider if your website is mobile friendly. Having a mobile friendly website increases the amount of consumers you have because they can now be on your website anywhere and at any time.