7 Important Characteristics of Effective Web Design
Article by Cyd Cruz
Graphics Design by Ryan Rivera
Online businesses are on the rise, and for a good reason. The internet has paved the way for companies to increase brand awareness and to effectively market their products or services to both present and potential customers. Although this provides an easy way for you to extend your reach, it also increases your chance of encountering competing businesses. That’s right, gone are the days when the only thing you have to worry about is the office a few blocks down the road. Now, you also have to worry about that website that’s above you on Google search results!
So how can you stand out from the rest? Well, one of the things that every online business should strive for is to provide its users with effective web designs. Although the term “effective” may be considered subjective to some, it’s important to note that there are certain qualities that every effective web design possesses.
7 Essential Features of an Effective Web Design
One of the crucial things that you have to consider when creating a website is web design. Effective web designs will play a role in how your users will learn what your business is all about. It can be the decision-maker on whether or not they’ll stay to learn more or leave to take their money elsewhere.
1. Simple and straightforward
One of the fundamental principles of web design is always to keep it short and straightforward. When users visit your website, they expect to immediately find what they’re looking for without any other distractions, pop-ups, or long blocks of texts. If your site requires users to scroll through a lot of content or click on lots of links before they find what they’re looking for, the chances of them leaving increases. We wouldn’t want that, would we?
Not that fancy and eye-catching graphics aren’t appreciated, because they are! Ensure that it doesn’t take the attention away from their purpose of visiting in the first place. That said, it’s helpful to do away with unnecessary content that won’t help your user’s journey to click on that call-to-action link. In the world of web design, simplicity is key!
2. Properly-utilized graphics
Now that the principle of simplicity has been explained, it’s time we moved to visual aesthetics. Believe it or not, the appearance of your website can also be a deciding factor on whether or not a potential customer would want to take their business to you.
Unprofessional-looking sites with too many color splashes, multiple font styles, and overuse of images will send them a message that you’re trying too hard.
When using graphics, be sure that it either helps convey what you want to tell them, or it fits the contents of the page. Statistics, charts, and stock images will help you, but too much of them will not only be an eyesore, but it may also drown out the rest of the features that you have to offer. Maintain a healthy balance between simplicity and the usage of graphics.
3. Consistent visuals
Another commonly-overlooked aspect of effective web design is consistency. Keeping a consistent design across all pages under your website’s domain is an absolute must, especially since visual aesthetics are essential for a user’s journey through your site. You wouldn’t want to navigate a website only to find out that their designer used different image themes, font styles, and page layouts, would you?
Before you even start designing your website, ensure that you already have a visual identity in mind. Don’t forget to stick to it as much as possible too! It wouldn’t be fun for a user to visit another page that looks like a different website.
4. User-friendly
As always, your website’s success depends on if your intended users will visit it or not. This is why we need to put our best efforts towards making navigation easy for our users. Besides, good visuals won’t get you very far if your site has broken links, hard-to-find buttons, and is overall hard to use, among others.
Another thing to note is that people are crazy about mobile phones nowadays. That’s right, the chance of them browsing the internet on a mobile device is high. In fact, more than 52% of internet traffic comes from mobile phones during the last quarter of 2019! So unless you want to miss out on all those mobile traffic, don’t forget to optimize your website for mobile phones as well.
Keep in mind that the optimal browsing experience for users is that the less they have to click to get to what they want, the better. They’re browsing the internet for convenience, after all! No need to make their lives harder!
Read: Accessible Web Design: 5 Ways to Design Inclusive Websites
5. Unique
On the internet, you’ll probably find 50 or so websites that offer the same services or products as you do. So it would make sense to stand out from the crowd, because a unique business is guaranteed to attract more attention, thus generating more visits AND profits. Personalized CTAs that will make users feel as if they’re directly talked to will work better than a CTA that looks as if it was made by a machine.
That said, make sure you don’t go overboard with the uniqueness. It’s still a good practice to adopt certain features that customers are used to seeing like navigation menus on the top of the page and price listings alongside the CTA, to mention a few. Remember, there’s a difference between standing above the rest and sticking out like a sore thumb.
6. Optimized
Proper web design also falls under good Search Engine Optimization (SEO) practices. To have an effective web design, one has to take into account the importance of SEO for their domain. To sum it up in a few words, SEO analyses provide insights on how your users navigate your website.
A lot of tools offer web developers and owners information when it comes to SEO statistics. Some of these tools point out which pages on your website have high bounce rates, has the most visits, and what features your visitors spend a lot of time checking out. These tools help find out where you’re doing good, what you’re doing right, and what are the aspects of your page that you should improve on if you want to increase your traffic.
7. Fast loading time
The loading speed of a website’s pages can also play a huge factor in determining whether or not you’ll get visitors. No one wants to wait a whole minute for a page to load. If your website takes longer than usual to show what you have to offer, your potential customers are just going to tab out and move on to other websites.
But wait, how does web design relate to my website’s loading time? The simplest answer would be that some files that are displayed may be too large. Photos, to give an example, may slow down your pages’ loading time if they’re too large, especially if there are multiple images of similar sizes. There are different ways to improve your page speed and your website must load quickly no matter what device they’re using to visit.
Gotafflair: the home of reliable web designers
It’s vital to always be on the lookout for ways to improve your website’s design and make it more effective. Poor web designs will lead to lost traffic and customers not going back to your website after they’ve tried out your service.
With over 3,000 clients serviced, Gotafflair has crafted a multitude of websites with remarkable web designs, all built to attract attention, customers, and conversions. Our web designers hold the experience to guarantee that your website stands out from your competitors!
Need help with starting up and improving your website? Our team of graphic designers possesses all the skills to produce outstanding and eye-catching graphics!
Give us a ring at 7798 8195 or link up with us via email at sales@gotafflair.com for a free consultation!
