It’s not difficult to create a website. It’s much more difficult to create a website that truly stands out, over the millions of existing sites. Yes, it’s quite a challenge to create a good site that not only attracts visitors, but makes them stay with you. But if you don’t want your prospective clients to opt for your competitors, you should know what makes a good website and how to create one.
How to Sort Out a Good Web Design
There’s no need to explain that a good design is one of the crucial characteristics of a good website. Moreover, most webmasters understand that design must be updated as the latest trends change and new solutions come to the scene. What are the components of a great website design? Here are some of the most important things you need to consider. Even if you are not a specialist in the sphere of web design, you still should know how to distinguish a good website design from a bad one. In particular, the following four tips will help you out:
- Set clear goals. At this stage of planning, you must know for sure what every section, every page and every option is intended for. There shouldn’t be any excessive features. If you can’t explain to yourself what this or that element serves for, how will you explain it to your visitors?
- Ensure a modern and pleasant-to-the-eye look. A good site must not look old-fashioned and boring.
- Fill it with great unique content. Even the most beautiful site will never become popular if its presentation is empty or useless. All types of content (texts, photos, videos) should be original and of a high quality.
- Mind usability and simple navigation. A user shouldn’t have to do many clicks to find the page he needs. Ideally, any page must be easily accessible in no more than 3 clicks.
Let’s consider further requirements for the well-designed website.
Branding
Development of a unique brand is neither an easy task, nor a quick one. It requires time, efforts and experience. Briefly speaking, the brand is what distinguishes your company’s image from all the rest in the market; it is something unique and easy to remember. The easiest way is to start with the brand visual identity. When working out your unique logo and page design, pay special attention to colors and fonts.
- You must be aware of the fact that different colors cause different feelings and emotions. Choose the color scheme for your brand image carefully depending on what effect you want to get.
- The choice of font may seem unimportant to you, but it really matters. Visitors won’t read your great texts and selling slogans if they don’t like the font or it’s not readable. Beware of using more than two fonts on one page.
Images
Without any doubt, images are an indispensable component of good-looking websites – they improve the overall image of the site and make articles more interesting to read. Keep in mind these things as well:
- Images must be of high quality. Blurred or unaesthetic pictures will not make your site look better. If you don’t have enough of your own unique photos, check stock photo sites. Some examples of good websites with high-quality photos are Unsplash, Raumrot and Little Visuals. If you prefer processing your own pictures, consider sites such as Canva, Adobe Spark and Venngage.
- Images must be relevant. Don’t add a picture unless there is a need for one.
- Images shouldn’t be too big. Large images slow down the page loading and deteriorate usability.
However, “appearance” is not the only element of web design that matters. The technical side is similarly important as it provides seamless functioning of all the sections of the website.
Technical Aspects of Web Design
There are several technical aspects of web design; the most important of them are the following:
- adaptivity to mobile interfaces;
- fast-loading;
- SEO;
- security elements;
- an overall site structure.
Adaptivity
The number of mobile internet users is growing year after year, and an adaptive design is, without a doubt, what makes a great website and increases its popularity drastically. An adaptive site is a site that automatically adapts to the size and type of the monitor used. Adaptive sites can be viewed from both smartphones and laptops without any problems. There are special tools that can help you assess your site in terms of adaptivity. One of such instruments is the Mobile-Friendly Test from Google.
Pages’ Loading Speed
The time required for the website’s pages to load is crucial for both user experience and search engines’ ranking of the site. Ideally, an average time of one page loading must not exceed 2 seconds. If the loading is too slow, most users tend to leave the site.
The tools for loading speed estimating are Google’s PageSpeed Insights and some others, such as Pingdom or GTmetrix services. They do not just help to identify problems but also show possible ways to fix them.
SEO
Your website contains tons of useful information, great texts and images; it works smoothly and quickly, but it costs nothing if people don’t see it. The main goal of Search Engine Optimization is to help people find your site using keywords. SEO is a complicated process, but its simplest, basic stages are as follows:
- analysis of the target audience and determining keywords;
- writing of optimized texts with the use of relevant keywords;
- getting high-quality links from external sites;
- creating a sitemap, which helps to increase the level of trust from the party of search engines.
These are just basic methods: in fact, there are many more ways to optimize a website.
Overall Site Structure and Navigation
A good website must have a clear structure and simple navigation. If it takes several minutes to find the needed page, users won’t stay long. A good sitemap and a clear, transparent structure of the site are a formula for success.
Keep in mind that website design is crucial for your business success. The image of your site is the image of your company. So try to make this image as attractive as possible.
SSL Protection
Many people know that SSL encryption is a must for a high-quality site. It’s like a guarantee of the website’s reliability and trustworthiness. If the data is encrypted, users can be sure that their personal and financial data is reliably protected.
All in all, your website is a “public face” of your business, so make sure it looks and feels fine. I hope my prompts will help you improve your site and boost your business.
