If you have a small business, it is important that you put in the time on developing a website for your website because that would be able to help you boost your audience and reach people who otherwise wouldn’t know your business. There is so much that goes into a website, this is a guide to web design and digital marketing. These are the usability and principles for effective and good web design.
6 Usability Principles for Effective Web Design
1. Every page element should fulfill a purpose
When you are building your own website, you have to make sure that every page element that you put on has its own purpose and that it actually works. Make sure that these elements would give your audiences some useful information, provide them with tools to help share the information, give additional resources, and encourage them to start and join conversations.
2. Calls to action should be clear
Adding a call-to-action on your page is not a bad thing to do, it would actually help them navigate their way through your website. When you do this, this would help give them ways to go from point A to point B.
3. Conversions should always be a top priority
Think of all of the possible paths in a website as their skeleton and make the web design that is valuable to help you drive in more sales. Imagine you are pitching your business proposal to them, make sure it looks elegant, experience-driven, and cohesive.
4. Navigation should make sense
You have to make sure that your customer would immediately know where they are doing the moment they click on your website. You have to include multiple levels of navigation and make sure that you have these keywords that would help them find what they are looking for.
5. Designs and page elements should stand out and be memorable
With all of the possible websites that are in the same niche as you are if you really want to stand out from your competition, you have to make sure that your designs and the elements on your page would help you stand out. Investing in your web design, adding pictures, and adding more personality to your website.
6. Elements should facilitate engagement
When you are making your web design, you have to encourage the people visiting to actually engage with your website so that you could rank up higher on the search engine rankings. You could do it by encouraging your visitors to clog, scroll, and log in. Any sort of interaction and engagement would help.
Principles of Good Web Design
1. Less is More – Simplicity Rules
Making your website look scrambled and over-designed would only draw away the people visiting your site because it tends to distract them. If you want to make your website more effective, simplicity is the key. Make your website look clean, fresh, and easy to navigate.
2. Innovative but Not Distracting
Working with professional web designers is great because they know and understand the importance of whitespace and how to use it. You could use these whitespaces to help focus on where you want them to go, but it also tends to be distracting. Make sure not to make it too noisy.
3. Aesthetically Appealing – To the RIGHT Users
You need to have this specific market segment where you could design just so that you could appeal to your target audiences. From the colors, images you use on that page, and all of the other elements that you have on that specific page.
4. Respectful, Honest, and Engaging
Visitors nowadays want to engage with a business in a human way so every word, every phrase, and every headline you have on your website has to be respectful, honest, and does not insinuate clickbait.
5. Designed for Usability and Functionality
Every piece of element you add to your website needs to have its own purpose. Make sure that everything you have on there has its own usability and functionality. Where you place these elements also matters. If these elements are not functioning properly, it could affect their whole experience with your website.
6. Cohesive in Design, Down to the Details
Adding some personality to your website is great because it would help you pop out from the rest of your competition, but you also have to make sure that they would not distract your viewers from what really matters. You have to make sure that you put in your services, history, mission, and actions of your team so they would get an idea of how you work as a company.
7. Easily Understood
The moment your visitors click on your website, they need to be able to easily understand everything they see on the screen, from the phrase, and headlines, to words. When you add terminology that only maybe a handful of people would understand, it tends to drive people off. Use terms that everyone would be able to understand.
Creating a website that is effective and appealing needs a lot of work and thought that goes into it, so you have to make sure everything is clean, easy to navigate, simple, and has all of the information your visitors may be looking for.
