5 Basic Tips For Effective Web Design
Getting online is easy. Anyone can do it. Many word processing programs provide easy to use tools to create web pages and there are many other free tools on the internet that can get you or your business a home on the web. That’s the easy part. Getting the edge on your competition is the hard part. The fact is, people judge and buy on emotion. These judgments are made in seconds. First impressions matter. Design matters.
If this is you, raise your hand: You’ve got a website. You’ve made it yourself, used a template, or had your plumber’s nephew throw something together for you. You see other sites around the web that you love, and they look nicer than yours, and, to top it off, they’re much easier to use.
Your asking, “What am I doing wrong? How do I get my website to be as engaging and easy to use as my competition?”
We will go through 5 keys that will enhance your website’s design, in turn, enhancing it’s performance and usability.
1. Design with your users in mind
When designing any website it’s important to define who the site is for. Like any good piece of marketing collateral, a website should have a well defined audience. Once you’ve defined who the target audience is, keep this person in mind when designing your site. For example, if your target audience is elderly women, you may not want to set the type in 8px. Or if your audience is primarily Harley Davidson bikers, you may not want to use tints of pink for your color pallet. Always put yourself in the users shoes.
2. Keep it Simple
This key piggybacks on the first. If you are keeping your user in mind while designing you will want to make sure that your site is as simple as possible. By simple, I really mean making your site easy to use with a clear message on what it’s about. Having the coolest looking site on the block may not always be the same as having the most liked and used site on the block. A pitfall for many website owners is that they design sites that are crammed with images and scattered content. The information architecture is all over the place. If your site looks cool to you, but is hard to use, people will leave. The best way to avoid this is to remember to keep things simple.
3. Have a hierarchy that aligns with your goals
Before designing your site you should write down what the goal of the site is. Is it to get the user to buy a product? Visit your place of business? Read yourblog? What ever the intended goal, make sure that the layout of your website helps you reach it. Hierarchy is simply placing the things of most importance in a more prominent position.
There are many ways you can create emphasis. It can be done with size, color, texture, whitespace, and proximity. When you are designing keep reassessing whether or not the layout is helping you achieve your goals. A good way to test this is to get someone else to have a look and ask them what action they would take when visiting your site. If they take the action that you wanted them to then your design is working! If not, re-think the layout of your site and rework it some more.
4. Use typography & color to communicate your message
Emotion and personal preference are tricky things. You can’t appeal to everyone, but hopefully you know who, specifically, you are trying to appeal to. When making design decisions about what typeface to use and what color pallet to go with always keep your target audience in mind. Try to avoid using overly decorative or novelty fonts, use fonts that are easy to read. Keep your font size large enough that it’s easy on the eyes. Have a clear contrast between headers and body copy. This helps to organize your content and keep it easy to consume.
A good way to find a color pallet that communicates your message accurately is to browse through magazines or art books and find an ad or painting that makes you feel the way that you want others to feel when they visit your site. Take that page and recreate the color palette on your site. You can get inspiration for colors from just about anywhere, but the good thing about a magazine page is that you can rip it out and have it by you while you design your site.
3. Only use technology to communicate better
There a lots of cool scripts and plugins out there that do some amazing things. Animations, slideshows, galleries, you name it. I’m a sucker for many of these, but I have to constantly ask myself, is it necessary for this project? A good way to asses whether you need to use a certain piece of javascript or something like that, is to ask yourself if there is a simpler way for the user to access the content.
Various scripts and plugins can be vary useful, though. A jQuery slider on the homepage can allow you to display important content in a way that allows the user to get at the information without having to “drill down” to get it.
Conclusion
A website first and foremost is a communication tool. Remember to keep assessing whether or not your message is getting through with your design. Is your design helping or hindering you from meeting your goals? Design with your users in mind, keep it simple, have a hierarchy that aligns with your goals, use typography & color to communicate your message, use technology only to communicate better. These keys will help you use your site to communicate more effectively with your target audience.
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