When building a website, the business and its web developer have to think carefully about its design. The site’s design is crucial because it can help generate better traffic and increase conversions. While creativity is always welcome, there are basic rules that can help you make your website more appealing. When getting a new website or redesigning your old one, keep the following suggestions in mind.
It can be quite frustrating to land on a website only to find the navigation hard to understand and convoluted. If a visitor cannot understand the navigation, they will find your site unappealing and the normal reaction is for them to leave and never come back.
While it is tempting to be creative with your navigation menus, inject some creativity into the design, but keep the functionality and structure simple.
Additionally, you can include descriptive text that includes one or two words to make the menu items more intuitive, which makes it easier for people to find and engage with the content they are looking for.
Simpler layouts have consistently produced better user experience and appeal results from the various surveys and studies that have been done on the subject. Making the layout simple does not mean it has to be boring; it only means that the main purpose of the website or a specific page is obvious to the visitor. Clean and functional site designs make your website faster, and easier to navigate and use on the myriad of devices that exist in the world.
A great example of a simple but functional and effective site design is that used on websites like unscramble.me. They keep the design straightforward while ensuring the visitor gets the information they need quickly, which is information about the service they provide. They break up the content using sections and headings to help the visitor as they scroll down the page.
We have touched on it above but ensuring readability and skimmability is crucial for making your website more appealing. Making your content readable and skimmable includes considering what makes presenting your content in a structured way easier.
To ensure people can find the information they are looking for faster, include helpful headings for each important section. Headings and subheadings can be used in this way in both blog articles and landing pages. They can also be used in very specific cases on your website’s homepage, especially in cases where you want to direct a visitor’s attention to one specific part of your website.
Next, break up your paragraphs so they include three to five sentences to ensure readability. Walls of text, as larger paragraphs of flowing text are called, are very unappealing and tiring to the reader.
Color and design go hand in hand because making the right choices for both can affect how appealing people find your website. Ideally, you want to use your brand colors throughout your website to enhance brand recognition.
However, your brand colors might affect the website’s design, readability, and usability. Instead, try to find complementary hues that do not stick out too much or impact readability and usability negatively.
Whitespace is just empty space on your web pages. It does not have to be white, but it has to contain no images or text. Whitespace can help improve spacing and reduce clutter on your website. Doing so helps reduce cognitive load on your readers.
Making your website more appealing can have a drastic effect on metrics such as conversion and the time people spend on the website. In most cases, much of what you need to do to ensure this will be completed when the website was designed, but it is important to keep the tips above in mind as your website grows and undergoes changes and redesigns.
