More and more businesses build a strong online presence, and most invest in web development or website design and other digital platforms to expand the brand and the services they offer. Having a website can benefit the organization in many ways, it helps your brand awareness and online coverage. According to research by GE Shopper, 81% of shoppers research their product online before purchasing (2019). Imagine when your potential customer is looking for a service to solve his problems, critically following the buying behavior, he is likely to go to a search engine like Google to find the company that offers the service he needs. If your business owns a website fully built and prepared for visitors, your business will gain advantages thanks to having a website perfectly built.
So, how to optimize your web designs, these selected golden rules of web design you should know are mentioned below.
1. Simple and easy to navigate
A user-friendly website is crucial because if a visitor finds it challenging to move between pages, they will become frustrated and abandon the website. Most visitors visit your website not because they will evaluate how aesthetic and slick the website is. Instead, visitors mainly want to complete some specific action and find information on the website, thus it’s crucial to keep the website easy to navigate. According to the research of Clutch (2019), easy navigation is the most important feature of the website. Users make an opinion about your website in less than 0.05 seconds (SWEOR, 2022), which affects whether they like it or not and whether they will stay. If the website design appears complicated and unpleasant, they are likely to leave immediately. It is very challenging to entice disgruntled site visitors to return.
Read more: 27 Eye-Opening Website Statistics: Is Your Website Costing You Clients?
How to improve the navigation:
- To make a good impression within 0.05 seconds, the best way is to improve the design of your home page.
- You should eliminate unnecessary elements which are overwhelmed that make it difficult for visitors to accomplish their action. The layout, color, and fonts also are important. Remember to keep it simple and clear.
2. Qualified and latest-updated content
Writing qualified content is part of making your web design outstanding. “Content is king” - Bill Gates (1996), that content is the real factor that makes web design successfully drive visitors into taking action you have already set up such as signing up for membership, filling out the form, subscribing to your blog, etc.
The content of the website design can include a blog, product introduction, description, and company profile. Your website won't deliver value to users or place highly on search engine result pages (SERPs) if it lacks excellent content. It's essential to spend money on quality writing and content for SEO.
The idea here is to produce content that is beneficial for your business and positions your business as an expert in the industry. Then, you can connect to other pertinent pages on your website; internal linking is important for SERP rankings as well as the user experience.
3. Optimized page speed
The page speed is a vital factor for the visitors to decide whether to continue actions on your website. According to Google Consumer Insights (2016), 53% of mobile site visitors will leave a page if it takes more than three seconds to load. You should pay attention to this matter because most internet users expect a fast and effective experience online, they are likely less patient with the website they visit the first time. Thus, optimizing the page speed is vital to keep the visitors staying longer and reduce the bounce rate of your website. According to Google's research (2017), the chance of a bounce increases by 32% when page load time goes from 1 second to 3 seconds.
Read more: 18 tips to reduce bounce rate and increase your conversions
4. Relevance
Your website design and content should be relevant to your business. For example, Etch’s website uses a consistent color theme and meaningful visuals to draw a general concept for its service.
The content of your blog should be associated with what your business offers to customers. Keeping the content and design relevant to your business helps your SEO performance and improves visitor experience.
5. Consistent
Although no two pages of your website will be the same, all pages should have a similar look and feel. One of the most crucial best practices for web design is consistency. Use consistent fonts and color schemes, similar page layouts, and visually appealing images to put this into practice. For blogs, format each post consistently for a pleasing user experience and a unified appearance.
6. Accessibility
Your website should be available on multiple devices and disabilities can easily navigate it.
According to Statista (2022), around half of all web traffic is generated by mobile devices; in the second quarter of 2022, mobile devices contributed 58.99% of all website traffic worldwide. Generally speaking, the website needs to be developed to work effectively and properly on multiple devices such as smart watches, smart TVs, and other devices with small screens, and different input modes, especially on mobile and desktop.
Moreover, web design should care about those with disabilities and limitations to create an accessible website. Those limitations can be mentioned as:
- Blindness
- Low vision
- Learning disabilities
- Cognitive disabilities
- Deafness
- Hearing loss
- Speech disabilities
- Physical disabilities
Accessible design enhances overall user satisfaction and experience, especially for older users and in a variety of settings and on various devices. Your brand can benefit from accessibility, which can also spur innovation and increase market reach.
Read More: Web Accessibility Perspectives - Compilation of 10 Topics/Videos
7. Check to find the error page regularly
You need to understand how prospects visiting error pages are impacting your business, regardless of why someone visiting your website encountered a 404 not found error. Not found issues lead to a poor user experience that drives visitors to leave your website, which lowers conversion and engagement rates, so you should regularly check your website for them. Not-found errors can also affect the SEO functionality of your website, resulting in lower search rankings.
8. Clear CTA (Call To Action)
CTAs are components of a website, commercial, or another piece of content that nudge the audience to do a particular action. The call to action could include a variety of options, such as joining, subscribing, beginning a free trial, or learning more.
Your website design should make your CTAs stand out. Think about how you're using color as well as additional aspects like the backdrop color, surrounding images, and surrounding text to make that happen.
Final word
These golden rules for web design can help your website operate more effectively and increase the conversion rate.
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