Top 7 Web Design Dos and Don’ts

A website that is designed well is an excellent investment that is capable of generating revenue for whatever business you may have. But, close to 40% of web surfers say that they won’t navigate a website if it’s poorly constructed. If you have a website that hasn’t been updated in a considerable length of time, the current state of your site could be unintentionally hurting its ability to generate sales.

Maybe it’s time you made additions to your old website, and that brings us to this article, where we explore seven of the top dos and don’ts for any website. Just put this list up alongside your website to determine whether or not it’s time you made changes. 

1. Have a Consistent Interface

One of the most important aspects of any website is a user interface that is consistent across the entire the site. You want to have a consistent look and feel across all the pages that make up your website. This means, the same navigation bar, typefaces, colour schemes, writing style, font faces, you want these elements consistent without any surprises or anything that could put the visitor off. 

The first thing to consider is making the site usable. Having a consistent website means, building it that way from the ground up. This means, if you have an inconsistent website, and you decide you want to make it consistent, oftentimes it means messing up the design of certain pages to make them consistent with the other pages. So it has its advantages and disadvantages. 

2. Make Your Website SEO Friendly

SEO is one of the most important aspects of a website, when considering the long-term viability of it. Search engine optimisation is essentially setting your website up so that it can generate traffic from the major search engines. Search engines rank individual pages on the net based on their relevancy to the search term typed in by the end user. This means you need to adopt keywords, which you’ll put in header tags, title tags, images and within the content. Make sure the content is relevant to the search term you want it to rank on. 

3. Adopt Optimal Use of Fonts

You don’t want to use a small serif font. Serif fonts tend to be most popularly used for body text, however when translated over to a computer screen, they can come across as illegible, especially on small screens. You also want to measure the amount of italics and bolds that you use. Text that is written in all caps tends to be more difficult to read, causing the end user to spend more time reading it. Additionally, when you write text in all caps, that is perceived as shouting, in the computer world that is, which means it can come across as rude, to some. Just like caps, the use of italics is also another way of drawing attention to your text, however, just like the serif fonts, when used too widely, it can make it things more difficult to read. 

4. Take Content Seriously

Your content is equally as important as the design of the site you want it on. Over 90% of all the data on the internet is in the form of written languages. Even if you get all the design elements of your site right, it’s nothing without great content to accompany it. The best websites have both excellent content and excellent site design. A designer’s main task is to ensure that the design aspects complement the sites content. 

You want to ensure your sites text is relevant. Text that is not relevant to the subject area of your site can, and often does confuse visitors. So you want to put as much effort as possible into crafting the best copy. 

Avoid the use of jargon. You want all the copy on your site to be written plainly, so that any random Joe can read it. Your best option is to craft your content for all reading levels, which means using words that are easily understood by the vast majority of people. 

5. Minimize Choice on Your Site

The more choices an individual has, the more confused they become. In many cases this can result in them not making any choice at all. When you give your end user too many options, it often leads to indecision, as they are made to think a great deal about their next course of action. If you want to get the most out of your website, then you want to streamline it. That means, ensuring everything on your site is meaningful. 

6. Make a Responsive Website

There are billions of different devices today being used to access the internet. This means, there are almost an infinite number of ways that an end user can and may arrive on your website. Whether it be via phone, desktop, music player, tablet etc. An important aspect of your UX design is ensuring that the visitor is able to browse your website, no matter what. That all the most important site aspects are there, displaying correctly, irrespective of the screen size they are viewing it on. 

To do that, you’ll want to ensure that you’re most important data is easily found. Unlike with your desktop users, when people browse websites with their mobile device, they are oftentimes more concise, which means they are looking for something very specific, whether it be the price of a product or your contact details. So you want this kind of information easily findable. 

You want the interactive components of your site to fit to size. Because mobile device users use their fingers to scroll and click on things, you’ll want to ensure that elements like buttons are made larger, so that they are more clickable for the user.

7. Test Your Design

You may think you have the best crafted site in the world, but without real-world feedback, you really don’t know what you have. You want to see what the end user thinks of it. Even if it means your sample size is limited to just two individuals. You want them to be unbiased and give you real insight into what people may or may not like about your site. From this information, you can restructure things to meet the needs of the vast majority of your potential visitors. 

Be sure to put analytics to use. Web analytics is an excellent tool that you can use to discover areas of your site that require your attention, or areas that you can better optimise for immediate increased revenue. 

–AUTHOR INFO—

Uchenna Ani-Okoye is a former IT Manager who now runs his own computer support website https://www.compuchenna.co.uk.