The World Wide Web is a place where websites thrive and businesses can exploit the Internet as another avenue for growth. Websites are integral for a business if it wishes to reside on the internet. But a lot of people argue on what a website should look like. Design is very subjective when it comes to websites; one might find the website good looking, while others find it horrendous.
However, we have decided to look at both perspectives and bring forth website design tips that are unanimously accepted by all.
1. Speed is an Absolute Priority
Website design focuses on a lot of things, not just how a website should look. One very important part of website design is the optimization process itself. Speed is something that should be paid close attention to. It is something that can either make or break your website. Website speed has an impact on a lot of things, from bounce rate to user satisfaction and even revenue.
If your website is poorly optimized, slow, then your visitors will not stick around and wait for things to load.
2. Hick’s Law
Hick’s law states that individuals, your visitors, will take longer to decide if they have more options available to them.
This is something that is widely utilized in many spheres, but most common is probably the jam example. Namely, in a supermarket, consumers were given more or fewer varieties of jam to try. Based on that, they would decide on one of them. Those that had more options available to them took longer to make the choice and it usually resulted in buying none. On the other hand, consumers that didn’t have much choice took less time to make the choice and it resulted in buying some jam.
According to Hürlimann Homepages, this can easily be applied to your website. But how – you might ask?
Here are a few examples of how:
- Reduce the number of menus available on your menu bar
- Limit each menu item
- Focus on one call to action
- Display only the social media buttons that you’re active on
- Stick to one goal per page
There are plenty of other ways you limit the choices on your website, these are just some of the most common ones.
3. Minimalistic Design
Here is a tip that applies to the design itself. Namely, every professional website should have a minimalistic look. Keeping your design simple, in general, is considered beautiful by your visitors. The more complex the design, the more visitors will look at it with over-the-top.
To keep a minimalistic design, here are a few examples to take note of:
- Sidebar: Website design experts strongly suggest you rethink ditching your sidebar for a single-column design. By ditching the sidebar, visitors will be less distracted and their attention will be centered on your content.
- Layouts: Non-standard site designs aren’t greatly appreciated by visitors. People love to stick with what they know, and the standard layout design is what works for the best. There is an old saying that goes: “don’t fix what’s not broken” and the standard layout design is something that has proven to work in the past.