Web Design Agency Surry Hills, Sydney

While the term “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” does apply to effective web design, not all elements are subjective. Yes, websites should be tailored to appeal to a pre-identified target audience however bespoke web design is also underpinned by some simple principles that hold true to every project. Sites that fail to conform to these basic rules tend to perform poorly in search engine rankings and have sub-optimal metrics such as high bounce rates, low on-site times and minimal conversions. So what makes for a winning website? Below, we take a look at 10 basic web design principles that every site should feature

Identify a purpose

Every website should have foundations built around a clear cut purpose that caters to the needs of its users. Are visitors in search of information, entertainment, transactions or another purpose? Furthermore, every page should have a clear purpose that meets some kind of customer need.

Clear cut communication

Online customers have notoriously short attention spans which means it’s critical to capture the attention, and retain it. Do this by making information easy to find, read and digest. This includes using navigation bars, having an easy to find home page and breaking up content into paragraphs and bullet points. Avoid using giant walls of text to describe your services or products, If users are overwhelmed by a page, they will leave. Split up large chunks of text with images, headers and page dividers and ask yourself – is all of this information necessary? Could it be split into two or three pages?

Readable typefaces

Reading online content should be inherently easy on the eyes. While there are no stone set rules, Sans Serif fonts are generally preferred by web designers, with optimal size identified as 16px.

Creative colours

Website colouring is so much more than simply picking and choosing shades that you like. The colours should match the feel of your brand and product. Colour palettes should be designed to enhance the user experience while simultaneously creating balance and harmony. The psychological effects of colour can also be employed to enrich the user experience and even boost sales. Draw attention to key buttons such as BUY buttons by using strong colours in contrast to your site background. For example, blues portray a serious and trustworthy feeling, orange conveys freshness and red communicates many things such as urgency, danger, hunger, sexiness or love.

Captivating visuals

Humans are intrinsically visual beings and peppering websites with pictures, videos and graphics can take target audience connectivity to a whole new level.

Ease of navigation

Plain and simple, a site that’s hard to navigate will send browsers running for the metaphorical hills. Be absolutely certain that your site employs a logical page hierarchy, ‘bread crumb’ leads, clickable buttons and of course, the ‘three click rule’ that states users should be able to track down desired information in a trio of steps.

Learn to love grid based layouts

Arranging content into grids will create a streamlined and balanced aesthetic that the human eye is inherently attracted to. And we’re not just talking run of the mill squares. Grids can still be utterly unique and creative!

Lightning fast load times

Slow load times jeopardise bottom lines, with Kissmetrics reporting that the average user waits just six to 10 seconds before abandoning a page. Keep it speedy!

Be mobile friendly

Mobile browsing is now bigger than ever. People on the go are constantly browsing sites whilst on buses, trains and standing in queues. Sites that fail to offer responsive web design will inevitably lose browsers.

Keep these design elements in mind and you’ll be on-track to creating a website that’s functional, beautiful and above all, effective.