Get It Right From The Start: 6 Essential Web Design Tips

Considering how many people are using the internet, and how extensively it is being used among those people, having a website for your organization has become more important than ever. Whether you are a web designer looking for clients or you are trying to develop a website for a client, you need to know the basics of what is considered a good website. In fact, even if you are a business owner who is looking to hire someone to develop a website for you, you should know what kind of website will get you the best results.

Web design can be approached in a lot of ways. Regardless of the path you choose, it’s about how well you create a product rather than how you make it. At the end of the day, you want your website to serve a function. Whether that is getting sales or just generating a lot of traffic, web design can play an important role in achieving that target. Here are a few important things about web design that can help make your website that much more effective.

Invest in Speed

Just because the internet is getting faster and cheaper doesn't mean that your website will load faster on the device a visitor is accessing it from. Yes, they are able to transmit more data faster, but if your website is not optimized and not configured to load as fast as possible, it will still load slowly even on an extremely fast connection. The problem is that your competitors will have faster loading websites.

When visitors access other websites and they load faster than yours, they will not bother coming back to see what you have to offer on your slow-loading website. Research suggests that people not only move on from slow-loading sites but are also extremely unlikely to return. In fact, just based on how your website loads and operates, your visitors will develop a perception of your entire business.

You might have had your site built by someone else, but if the speed isn’t there, it is your business that is going to suffer, not the developer. There are quite a few ways that the speed can be increased on a site. It depends on the kind of website you have. A few general rules include optimizing images, optimizing the design for mobile, limiting the use of Java and CSS at the top of the page, and of course getting the best hosting that you can afford.

The Fold

The fold, the first page, the visitors' viewing area, or what is also known as the first bit of the web page that loads, is extremely important. This part of your website sets the tone for the entire website and also has the biggest impact on visitor behavior. Just like speed, if this part of your website doesn't impress visitors, then it is unlikely they will wait or continue with the rest of the page. If you want to learn about what kind of web page layout works best for certain kinds of businesses you can read more here to see what will work best for you. However, the idea of optimizing everything before the fold is something common to all those designs. According to research, nearly 90% of users will not go beyond the first page if they do not have a strong reason to and/or they aren’t impressed by things on the first page.

This is where you need to make the greatest effort to grab the visitors' attention and make sure you can retain it till they get to the bottom of the page. In the last part of the webpage, you need to have something that is interesting enough to motivate the visitor to either scroll further or to click and move to another part of the website.

Less Is More

If keeping the visitors' attention is the aim, then try to not make the mistake of overcrowding the main page. Designers often think that having more things on the page will help to keep the visitor on the page since he or she will spend time exploring the different menus, tabs, or other elements of the main page. In reality, it is quite the opposite. This concept is represented in the Paradox of Choice quite well. The idea is that the more options that a person has, the harder it is for them to make a selection and consequently the lower the possibility that they will make any decision at all. This idea has been tested time and time again in small to medium-scale businesses, and every time it has proven to be true. When customers are presented with a smaller selection of goods to choose from, they make purchase decisions more often whereas when they have a lot of options, they rarely buy anything.

The same applies to web design. The more cluttered and 'loaded' your website is, the more overwhelming it will be for people visiting it and the lower the chance that they will take any favorable action. In fact, they may not even stay on your page. They will prefer to move to a different website that is less stressful for them and which they think offers more value than a website that is crowded with too much information.

Follow User Behavior

A lot of website design has to do with understanding human psychology and making the most of the natural instincts that people have. In the same way that people don't like seeing too much info on a single webpage, they also don't like to see web pages that are cluttered with sidebars, headers, ads, pop-up menus, a little chat window at the bottom, and a bunch of other things. Moreover, visitors like to see familiar layouts.

They find that less overwhelming and they are more likely to take action on such a site. Consider removing, or at least shrinking, the sidebar so you can help your visitors focus on what really matters and that is the actual page that they are looking at. Rather than having a completely customized layout, consider using something that is normal among websites within your niche. Keep the colors mild, as something too bold or pungent is likely to overwhelm the visitors. If you do need to have something extra on your webpage try to limit that to one single thing. Rather than having an endless menu, keep the menu short and tight. Research has shown that visitors have a 90% chance of interacting with the first pop-up or the first step in the menu, but after that, the possibility drops to less than 10%.

Direct User Attention

Just because users have natural preferences doesn’t mean you can’t modify their behavior. For instance, if you want users to look at a certain part of your page, consider using images of people who are also looking in that direction. Merely using images that have people looking in the direction of the visitor will not have a huge impact. Images of people looking in the direction that you want your visitor to look can have a very positive impact on the way people behave on your site.

Similarly, you can have arrows, signs, and other gestures that help guide the users' attention. These have been proven to work just as effectively as having a picture of a person looking in that direction. This way, you can get people to focus on that banner you have or get them to look at the sign-up form. If you do want to use images of people, then make sure this isn't stock photography. Using your own picture or of a friend will be far more effective. Moreover, using your own picture helps to develop a relationship with the visitor as they are able to learn about the people behind the website they are visiting.

SEO

SEO is still very alive and very useful. If you don't know how to do proper SEO for your website, make sure you get a specialist to help you out. Even if you implement all the tips previously mentioned, with a poor SEO plan, it will be very difficult to get your website to rank highly. At the end of the day, the search engines are also monitoring user behavior to understand which website is good and which isn’t.

The higher the page engagement and the more time a person spends on your website, the more favorable the perception that the search engine will develop about that website. On-page, off-page, and technical SEO are still extremely relevant. After the recent updates to Google Search, there is more reason to take SEO seriously and make it a part of your website management protocol. Especially if you had a great start, but traffic is gradually decreasing, it might be time to look into your SEO strategy and work on it a bit.

Search engines want to give their users the best experience possible so that they will continue to come back and use their services. Just like websites, search engines also rely on getting massive traffic to earn their bread and butter. Once you understand what makes your visitors tick, you will also understand what search engines want. With both sides of the coin covered, you will have a golden plan that will help you achieve the traffic goals that you are after.