In website design, there are many different directions and styles in which a website can go: it can be anywhere from minimalistic to classy, from sleek and modern to playful and vibrant. While the final look and feel of the website should exude the personal style, brand identity and line of work, there are a few rules that are always applicable. Excellent web design feeds into the user’s experience and functionality, at the same time, being easy to understand at first glance. Here are a few simple website design tips that can help make the site useful and compelling.
Keep The Homepage Minimalistic
The homepage of a website should communicate the core message it is trying to convey instantaneously. People hardly ever read every word on a website and instead, quickly scan the page, pick out important phrases and words that stand out, images and sentences. With these behaviours in mind, it is better to appeal to emotions instead of word count.
The lesser site visitors of a website have to read, remember or click on, the better they will be able to process and evaluate the content. By designing the website to decrease the attention span of the people, it is more likely that users will do what they intend them to do.
Design With Visual Hierarchy In Mind
Hierarchy is a crucial principle of design which helps display content in a clear cut effective manner. With the proper use of hierarchy, it is possible to lead the attention of the visitors of a site to certain elements on the page in order of priority, starting with the most significant part. The major components of visual hierarchy are size and weight (people tend to gravitate towards colourful or big bold titles and then move to smaller text in paragraphs) and element placement (to guide the viewer’s attention based on visual cues).
Once a clear hierarchy for the information has been established, readers cannot help but subconsciously follow the breadcrumbs left for them. After that, apply colour, contrast, and spacing to accentuate these features further, keeping in mind what draws the most attention and making sure that it is always intentional.
Create Easy To Read Website Content
“Readability” is a measure of how easy it is for people to recognize and understand words, sentences, and phrases. If the site’s readability is high, users can effortlessly scan and skim-read through it. In this way, taking in information becomes effortless.
Achieving website readability is actually pretty easy.
Contrast
Adequate contrast between the text colour and background colour is vital for readability and website accessibility. While the website’s colour scheme represents the brand colours, make sure that there is sufficient contrast between the elements.
Large Letter Size
Most people will not bother to read smaller fonts. A typical rule of thumb is to keep the body of the text at least 16pt.
Type Of Fonts
There are a multitude of fonts to choose from, the most common type being serif fonts (which have little to no projecting lines on the ends of letters, like Times New Roman) and sans serifs.
