Website Design Review: What Is a Good Web Design And Why It Matters

What Makes a Good Website?

Good website design is simple and clear, with the purpose of the website easily deducted from the first page. Simplicity in color, typography, and imagery are usually a safe choice when thinking about user-friendliness. 

However, you don’t want the website to be generic, too simplistic to the point of being dull and boring. There should be a good balance between having a creative and interesting design, whilst staying simple and not going overboard with colors and imagery.

 As mentioned, the website is usually the customer’s first contact with your business. Customers are likely to judge your business’s credibility based on your webpages, and this will impact their decision on whether to use your services. Using a generic design instead of building a custom site can be the downfall of many a small business. If you still don’t think web design matters, imagine stumbling on to a business website that looks like it’s from the ’90s and is extremely clumsy to navigate – would you use their services, or rather go with a more modern, easy-to-use website?

There are several other factors to keep in mind when creating a website. You need to think of the imagery, visual hierarchy, and how to keep it all mobile-friendly. In this article, we will be discussing these, and other important factors that contribute to making a great website.

Best Practices of Good Web Design

Single Purpose of the Website

The purpose of your website should be clear from the very front page. What is it that you want to offer? Whether you are selling a product, marketing yourself and your expertise, or offering services to customers, this needs to be clearly communicated to users. This will help the user to interact with your website and help you to attract the people you want on your site. You may also use search engine optimization for attracting customers.

Simplicity of Design

The design should always be as simple as possible, whilst keeping it interesting. Complicated designs usually lead to confusing user experiences, which is not attractive to potential customers. The use of colors, font, and text should be kept modest and consistent throughout the whole website. You will want your customer’s attention to be focused on what you offer, not on the extravagant design elements of the site.

Easy Navigation

The customer should be able to find what they are looking for as quickly as possible. Customers want effectiveness and are not often willing to spend extra time navigating a difficult website – they will go somewhere else if it takes too long to find what they are looking for. For example, finding the link to your customer service page should be easy. The use of headers and footers is important, and the overall usability should be smooth.

F-Shaped Reading Pattern

The F-shaped pattern refers to how people tend to scan web pages. What it tells us, is that users tend to initially read in a horizontal movement for the first lines, and then move on to scan the left side of the page vertically. This implies, that the first lines of the pages will receive more attention from users, and especially the first few words on the left will be fixated on.

You can use this knowledge to benefit your site design. You should include the most important messages of your page in the first paragraphs, to ensure they get attention. You can also use clearly visible headings and subheadings, and bold important words that you wish users to pay more attention to.

Visual Hierarchy

Arranging the elements of your website in order of importance is referred to as visual hierarchy. Depending on your preference, you may do this by size, contrast, color, style or texture. Your goal is to establish a focal point where the user’s attention will be drawn to. 

The focal point is where the most important information is. Using this technique will help the user to not miss essential information.

Grid-based Layout

The grid-based layout is used to arrange the content of your website into a clear rigid grid structure. This is done by using columns and sections that line up in perfectly straight lines. Grid design helps to make your design structured and organized. This type of design also helps the website to look neat and balanced, as well as aesthetically pleasing and easy to navigate.

High-Quality Images

The imagery used on your website should be simple, but effective. Any blurry images can make the page feel cheap and unprofessional. Your images should be relevant, high quality, and serve a purpose. The imagery should always relate to your content.

Mobile-friendliness

Building a responsive website means the user-friendliness will translate to other devices besides laptops and computers. Many customers will be looking at your webpage on their mobile devices. Therefore, you need to make sure the design works just as well on phones as laptops.

Visible calls to action

This point relates again to user-friendliness. When a user can easily find your call to action, they are more likely to take you up on whatever it is your website is offering. You don’t want the call to action to be too pushy, but it should be clearly visible on your site.

Wrap Up

By now you should be well aware of the importance of good website design, and you know all the important elements based on our website design review. If you are ready to take on the challenge and start building a website for your business or to market the services you offer, head over to Weblium to start designing your website today!