One of the most important and effective web design tips is to let each visitor to the site judge it for themselves and not how the website owners would have them see it.
There are quite a few factors that go into make a great looking website from the flow of the site, which is how easy a visitor is able to navigate the site when he/she is looking for something, to email capture services and basic forms.
So in a nutshell, how it performs as well as how it looks. There are a lot of web designers out there that slap websites together day after day not thinking about the bigger picture – the company they are designing the website for.
What are their needs? Who are their customers? A professional web design company should consider all aspects for their clients business before even storyboarding some ideas.
Does the company have a website already and is it outdated? If so they it is your job as a website design pro to make sure you add modern CMS elements to the backend like plugins for Content, Video, SEO, and Social Sharing.
There is lots to think about before beginning the design of a new site or redesign of an existing site. Do some research about the company and when it’s finished they will not only thank you for it, they will more than likely recommend you to other business partners, friends, and business acquaintances.
Basic Web Design Tips
Halifax Web Design Services have put together a few basic web design tips and principles on how to create a pleasing looking website, one that makes the user want to stay around a little longer reading your blog posts, purchases your products, or just sharing your message through social media.
A great UX (user experience) is what it is all about these days. When you get a visitor on your website, you want him there are long as possible with the eventual goal to either buy a product or service, or share your site with friends on social media channels.
By looking at some basic website tips, it will help in the overall design, and bring in more traffic and keep your visitors there much longer.
1. Purpose
Great web design always caters to the individual needs of the visitor to your site. Are your website visitors are looking for info, reading your posts, searching for products, and other types of interaction, each page of your site needs to have a clear message, great flow from page to page and be able to fulfill a specific need for your visitors in the most reliable and effective way possible.
2. Communication
People on the web really to want information served up quickly, so the number one thing you should offer them is to communicate clearly, and to make the information easy to read and understand. Some effective web design tips to include in your design include organizing information with the use of headlines, titles and sub titles, and then by using bullet points instead of long winded sentences that tend to ramble. This is where you may lose visitors to your site. State your message, be clear, and keep it simple.
3. Colors
You can really enhance the users experience by really thinking about the color palette you are going to use for the overall design of the website. Certain colours just create balance and harmony while others such as contrasting colors for the text and the background, for instance, may make reading a bit easier on the eye. Vibrant colors tend to create emotion and should only be used sparingly like for “call to action” phrases. Lastly white space or negative space is very effective believe it or not at giving your website a modern and uncluttered look. Remember what I said previously, keep it simple! Less is more in this case.
5. Images
Always choose the right image because a picture can paint a thousand words. By following this engaging website design tip your website can help with branding and allow you to connect to a much larger target audience. If you don’t have high quality (300 DPI) professional photos on hand, or cannot create them yourself in Photoshop, then you may want to consider purchasing stock photos for a modest fee. You should also consider using infographics and videos as a content alternative to make your message even stronger.
6. Mobile friendly (Responsive)
It is now very common in 2015 to access websites from a variety of mobile devices with varying screen sizes, so it is very important to consider that your website must be responsive or mobile friendly.
If your website is not responsive to various browsers, platforms and screen sizes, then you can rest assured that you are going to get bounces (visitors leaving your site as soon as they enter it). One of the best and effective web design tips that can be shared is to always make sure to tell your client that you are making the website mobile friendly so that anyone who has an iPhone or smartphone can view your website on their device. So right off, make sure you tell your web design clients you are including this in the web design package.
There are many more features of a website we will talk about in later blog posts, but for now I just wanted to focus on a few of the main and effective web design tips by one of the best and most respected web development firms in the space – HalifaxWebSolutions.com