Good Website Design: What Makes a Website Work?

Websites that aren’t designed well tend to perform poorly, battling issues such as high bounce rates or low conversions. So how do you correct these issues? Learn what makes for good website design so that you can apply it to your own site. The principles of good web design can be followed for any website, so ask yourself how these are being integrated into your own website and what changes you may need to be making. Your website does a lot of the talking for you: make sure it’s saying something good! Here are some tips from a Sydney web design company

Good Website Design do’s –

Convey Purpose

Ask yourself what the main purpose of your website is ultimately going to be. Do you want customers to purchase an item? Maybe sign up for a weekly newsletter? Whatever the case, prioritise your website design around this singular purpose. One of the ways you can do this is your visual hierarchy. Visual hierarchy refers to the arrangement of elements in an order that implies the rank of importance. The human eye perceives things in a certain way and that clues the brain in to what’s most important. Consider what you want to be perceived as most important on your website. This is usually a call-to-action button of some sort. Ensure that this is what immediately captures their attention and is deemed most important, then go from there.

Don’t Overwhelm Visitors

If you overload your web visitors with choices, they might get so overwhelmed that they don’t make one at all. This makes the perfect case for filters. They make it easier for visitors to search and navigate your site, so that they can find exactly what it is they’re looking for. It’s totally understandable to want to pack in all of the information you can, but think carefully about how you’re doing it. Organised information makes for good website design; clutter makes for confused customers. Keep your information easily digestible and concise to better capture and keep a customer’s attention.

Part of this includes navigation. Your website should be simple to navigate; don’t make visitors work too hard to find any one thing. A navigation bar on the top or side is your best bet for presenting an easily navigable site. This also helps Google navigate your website easily when its added to your sitemap, which is good for you SEO (search engine optimisation).

Appealing Graphics

You’ve thought about your content and its structure, now think about how you’re going to present it. Design elements can pull your entire site together, so think carefully when choosing them to improve the web design. This can include typography, images, and colours, among other things. Think about your brand image and what existing creatives you already have (like a logo or ads). Ask yourself if these all mesh well with your website and what steps you can take to ensure that they do. Your content could be incredible, but if the font is unreadable or the colours give people a headache, they won’t bother.

Along the same line, consider how you’re using white space. White space can be used very effectively if you know how. It can present a clean website image, something that typically performs better. This isn’t to say that you should cut down on content to create more space. However, consider how and where you’re displaying content. You don’t need to cram everything into the smallest space possible; that will only lead to frustration on both your and your visitor’s part. Make sure you’re leaving enough room on each webpage that things still look clean and simple.

Load Time

This is one of the simplest yet most important components of good website design. A slow website can be a killer. Most of the time, customers will navigate away from a site that takes longer than a few seconds to load. Some options for speeding up your site include optimising image sizes or compressing script. You can check your website speed on various sites (like gtmetrix.com) that give you tips on how you can speed up the slower parts of your site. Using a tool like this can help ensure that your site is running as quickly as it can.

Be an Action Star

A good website needs a call-to-action. This is the main purpose of attracting visitors to your site. The appearance of this button should reflect its importance. Use colours that contrast with your background so that the button better stands out. Another option is to increase the size of your call-to-actions. This isn’t necessarily effective in every single case, but some smaller options could stand to be enlarged. Think about how frequently some points of your site will be visited or used. Make their size and accessibility proportional to that use.

Give the People What They Want

When considering how to design a good website, always keep this in mind: at every opportunity, cater to the users. Sure, you may think a certain idea is really cool, but if it won’t make sense to website visitors, then it’s not what you want on our site. For starters, don’t test the user’s patience. If you’re offering some service and want visitors to sign up, don’t make them fill out too many fields. If the customer feels like they’re being made to jump through hoops, they’ll likely abandon ship. Strive for simplicity in all factors of your website.

At the end of the day, good website design is a design that appeals to the user at all points. Don’t sacrifice your websites usefulness for flashy designs; your conversions won’t be helped. Rather, ensure that your content and design blend seamlessly together to create a user experience that’s as simple as it is sweet.

Good Website Design Example