A website serves as the heart of an internet marketing strategy. The design can be the difference between a prospective customer following the buyer’s journey through to conversion or losing the prospect to a competitor.
The website is how visitors learn about your brand, your values and personality. Visit – 10 Principles Of Good Web Design — Smashing Magazine – for principles of good web design.
When you have a high volume of users but these visitors are not converting, you might consider your web design. Evaluate how the current site works for you and serves your business in achieving its objectives. Without an effective website, companies lack the tools for significant online advertising results.
Digital marketing schemes require a responsive design to set them apart from fierce industry competition in the New York market. How will you know if your we design is effective. Let’s look at qualities of an effective website design.
Qualities Of an Effective Website Design
An effective website design contributes to establishing your brand’s identity. Because it’s the first impression of your business, if should speak to the targeted audience of the solutions the company can provide for their needs.
It should further display the business’s professionalism and why prospects should choose this company over the competition.
More business leaders are seeking the help of third-party professional web design in New York for the most effective results. Consider the following qualities you should look for with a successful outcome.
Simplified
The best quality when it comes to website design is a simplified approach. When you give people a ton of choices, often they will opt to make no decision. This is because the options become overwhelming and increases the time it takes to consider each for an eventual decision.
Visitors have a distinct purpose when arriving at the site. While fancy layouts are visually appealing, these graphics can be distracting when trying to find what the user is looking for. When scanning the site, you want to determine if there are details that are truly unnecessary.
You might not need to waste space with unwanted decor when visitors prefer simple and sleek with an easy navigation to find what they need fast. White or negative space can be strategically implemented to bring out a site’s wow factor. These are areas purposely left blank.
Without these spaces, pages can become confusing, cluttered, and put visitors off. Professional designers use white space for a sophisticated and clean appeal.
Pictures speak volumes
Pictures can relay a lot more information faster than large volumes of test. In effective design, images can be placed strategically to guide visitors through the website.
They can point users toward CTAs such as “Contact Us” or “Shop Now” leading them toward conversions. They serve as visual cues to have the prospect perform a desired action.
Quality should be the focus when choosing images. These should be high resolution and fit the website style. Using images of people is always a good idea. You want to avoid stock photos that look staged since these are unreputable. As much as possible, replace text with infographics on sites.
Visual appeal is key
Regardless of having excellent content, you can lose conversions when the website is not aesthetically pleasing. The most important elements for an effective site include typography, color, and balance. Colors elicit an emotional response.
Warmer tones like yellow elicit energy and excitement while cool tones such as purple and green are calming and tranquil. Red is proven to encourage hunger, a reason many fast-food places use red for their logos. Choosing vastly contrasting colors can be jarring and distract the user.
You want to focus on the same color family. Branding should be consistent with colors that match your logo. Refrain from using too many different colors, which will overwhelm the audience. The suggestion is to keep roughly five colors and below with between three and four preferred.
The feel of your website can be greatly impacted by typography whether you choose ornate or cursive fonts or a more modern Sans Serif. Sans Serif is recommended for body text with a max of three typefaces and font sizes ranging between 12 and 16 pts.
The text can be overwhelming when you use large paragraphs. Instead, there should be roughly 18 words per line with short paragraphs broken up by strategic white space. If you want to keep all age groups in mind, you might want to use a larger font size to make the test easier to read for everyone.
Consistency is essential
The best way to establish trust with users is by maintaining a consistent design across the site. You can do this with the same menu bar at the top of all pages, the same fonts and color scheme and a consistent style of images.
Using stock photos on the home page and switching to vector art on other pages can appear disjointed and confuse users. An effective website requires consistency across the whole website.
The pages can have subtle differences in their layout for visual interest but they must match. The last thing you want is for a visitor to click on a new page only to question if they’ve inadvertently gone onto a completely different website. View here for tips on improving your website to reach a broader audience.
The user experience
Web design is about how it looks, what it feels like and also whether it works. Its success is primarily based on functionality and usability. A stunning site has little purpose if the uses experience is poor. When professional designs create a site, they always prioritize the user and cater to the visitor’s needs.
For effective navigation, you want clickable buttons and logical page hierarchy. The user should have minimal effort when maneuvering through the site and finding what they need. The suggestion is that users be able to make three clicks or less and achieve their goal. If they can do better on a competitor’s site, they will do so.
The underlying purpose of the site should be apparent at all times. For an effective website, you want to be upfront, clear, and honest about your site’s purpose.
