03 Dec
In an online world, those first few seconds depends on how you’re going to portray your website. While everyone can create a website and set it up for running, that certainly does not guarantee your website will turn into success without web design best practices. A website appears to the customers as a 24/7 storefront. It helps customers form a proper opinion on how you can make a good first impression. When creating a blog or business website you need to make sure it appears appealing, intuitive and has an effective website design.
As per the motto of an infamous web design company:
“When a website is done right, it’s when you win your customers.”
Are you wondering what elements can make your website design stand a class-apart from the rest?
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Now let’s talk about the 7 web design best practices which you can adopt to create a stellar website design.
i. Creating a Strong Brand Identity
Your brand is the foundation of your business. It’s one of the reasons why you must ensure to keep branding consistent across the different facets of your website. Brand is not just about creating a powerful logo, it’s about selecting the color scheme, and ensuring that iconography should remain constant throughout the product/service. In the online world, it’s more about the website design.
It only takes a split second for a customer to make up their mind if they want to do business with you.
The right website design reinforces your value proposition.
Using the right aesthetics, you can set a powerful tone across your entire website expressing how you can make a difference in the lives of your people. It can help you establish the perfect brand equity.
ii. Publish Clear Call to Action on Website
If there is one thing which can motivate your customers to convert, it is none other but a clear call to action. When creating a website, make sure to add powerful call-to-actions which resonate with your brand messaging. Ask yourself, what is your website’s ultimate goal & objective?
Do you want to bring more leads? Do you want people to sign up? Or do you want them to get in touch? Based on your requirement, use a powerful call-to-action so you can attract.
Take for instance, Crazy Egg!
Their website has a very powerful call to action encouraging visitors to take action.
Source: CrazyEgg
There are a few key points which you can take from their CTA design.
- The messaging sets the foundation allowing customers to quickly take action.
- There’s a powerful headline which ensures that customers consider following the CTA.
- Heatmaps are complicated tools, but see how crazy egg have simplified it for their audience.
With the right strategy at work and the right call to action, you can motivate people to take action.
iii. Use White Spaces in Your Web Design Accordingly
White spaces are also called negative spaces. It gives your website the room to breathe visually. When you group items close to each other, you can often fall in the risk of overwhelming your visitors. Instead of convincing them, you can end up sending them away and that’s definitely a good thing.
The Internet is full of cluttered web designs.
If you don’t wish to add to the growing cluttered website designs, it’s best that you take care of the following things.
When designing a website, use margins and paddings so there’s good enough space between images & other elements. For example, take a look at Apple’s official website.
Source: Apple
As you can see every element is carefully segmented using paddings and lines.
iv. Keep Your Web Design As Clean As Possible
A cluttered website or a website with a disoriented design always fail to meet the client’s requirement.
When you create a web design, make sure your website is easily scannable and your content is digestible. Don’t use sharp colors or high contrast images as they can easily overwhelm the audience. Instead, stick to something subtle and use a powerful content marketing copy to attract audiences.
When designing websites, make sure to follow a strict visual hierarchy. Make sure your site’s hierarchy compliments by creating an order of significance. For instance, start with a strong headline and use matching colors which can go effectively in contrast with the message. Place the main headline in the center as it can have a much reliable impact on your target audience. Use unique colors in offsets.
Make sure to use white spaces effectively. The use of negative spaces also plays an equivalent role.
v. Introduce the Perfect Storytelling
No website can turn into a success unless it doesn’t share your brand story with the audience.
Hence, in order to make sure your website exudes the real essence of your brand, use the perfect storytelling element in your website to highlight the important unique selling points.
Storytelling expresses the true essence of your business to your customers. With effective story-telling you can share insights on how you achieve things that you sought out for in the online world. You can discuss things like how you created your brand? How did you move forward with your vision? What is your brand doing differently to help contribute within the society? And so much more.
With the right story, you can deliver a powerful emotional impact on your target audience.
vi. Focus on Mobile-First Web Design
We live in a time where everything has shifted to a mobile-first approach. If a person wants to search a particular website, they will always resort to their smartphones rather than accessing the Internet through a laptop or a desktop. Today, more than 90% of the global audience interact with the online world through a smartphone. On an average, a great number of individuals are now on mobile.
Image Source: Wearesocial
Realizing how your target audience engages with your online presence can help you a great deal. Hence, when you’re designing a website, make sure to take a mobile first-approach.
When designing websites using a mobile smartphone, don’t forget that you will be facing certain restrictions. For example, you will come across problems like a small screen size where you will be challenged with importing a lot of content. You have to be dot-point and accurate.
However, having a mobile friendly approach takes a much leaner and more digestible website. On the bright side, once you’ve achieved exactly what the customer seeks, you will be able to play big.
vii. Never Forget SEO
Without having a website well-optimized for search engines, your website design is nothing more but another dormant presence lying on the Internet somewhere on the fourth or fifth page of Google Search. Now, out of every 100 people, only 1 consider moving to the second page of search.
So don’t forget to use targeted keywords especially throughout your website when you design it. Search engines normally track websites which are ranking on relevant keywords searched by different users. And it’s not just the keywords, you have to make sure your website can effectively speak to your audience as well. The more effectively your content speaks, the more business you will make.
Make sure your targeted keywords appear in H1, H2 headings. Ensure the keyword density in your website content remains appropriate. At the same time, ensure the keyword is well optimized in your meta data, images, etc. Use a simple short URL with the keyword placed within it.
These are just some additional practices which you can follow to create your content SEO optimized.
viii. Best Web Design Example
As an example let’s assume that you own a coffee shop. I am talking about a physical, an actual shop here. Now you want people to come to your coffee shop rather than Starbucks located at the end of the road.
Well, if Starbucks is your competition, then you surely need something very powerful to attract. From piercing fluorescent overhead lights to unforgivingly amazing concrete floors, you would want everything to send the best impression that can win your clients easily and make their stay at your coffee shop a lot enjoyable.
Did you get my point? Same is the case with the website, you have to focus on every detail, from design to layout, from fonts to colors, from logo placement to content, even the minutest details. In short, these are actually the web design best practices that you must implement on your site.
ix. Let's Summarize
There you go, here are the 7 web design best practices which I believe are worth bringing into consideration when it comes to website design. A website is the Holy Grail of your entire marketing and without a good site design, you can simply fall behind in the digital race. If you want to create an impact in the online world, above discussed are some of the web design best practices which you can follow to make sure your site can rank up on the Google Searches. And before you know it, there will be significant traffic coming to your site in no time.
About the Author:
Fahad Ali Khan is a digital marketing expert working as a senior digital marketer with one of the best website design Dubai based company “Branex”. He is a renowned specialist in promoting software of different kinds and has helped many young people learn a lot about digital marketing.
Hi, I am Faisal Rehman.
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