5 Good Web Design Practices You Should Follow in 2021
Designing websites requires a lot of attention to detail. If you want your website to perform well, you need to know a couple of best practices to ensure that your website is up to today’s standards. Now, not every business owner out there knows how to design their own website, but it pays to know how a professional website looks and functions. Here are five web design best practices your website should follow.
- Consistency is Key
When it comes to your website’s interface, consistency should be your priority at all times. This is one of the pillars of good UX design, and every well-designed website follows this rule. The overall look and feel of your website should be consistent across every page. That includes your navigation, colour scheme, typefaces, and even writing style. Maintaining consistency can positively impact your website, and it will prevent users from being confused as to what page they are on or where the usual buttons should be when navigating through your website.
- User-Friendly Navigation
There are a lot of business owners and web designers who focus more on the aesthetics of the site and often overlook how vital navigation is. In reality, navigation is the cornerstone of usability. No matter how good your website looks, users will still ignore it if you don’t design your navigation right. Some great navigation tips include:
- Limit your top-level navigation to a maximum of seven links or categories.
- Create sub-navigation under those links with clear categorization.
- Use short and clear labels for your navigation options.
- Keep your navigation bar visible or at least easily accessible at all times.
- Change the Color of Visited Links
Very few people know this little website design trick of changing the colours of the link that’s already been visited by users. While it may be a small detail but it’s quite crucial. Users could unintentionally revisit the same pages repeatedly, not knowing that they’ve already been there. This can sometimes be annoying and has the potential to make users bounce off your site, so make sure to follow this as much as possible. Being able to know your past and present locations makes it easier to decide which page to visit next.
- Keep Pages Scannable
Scannability is how easy it is to read and understand the body of words on a certain web page. Most users tend to just scan a page and see if anything interesting or whatever they’re looking for can be found there. This makes it essential for you to make your web pages scannable and easy to understand. As much as possible, avoid huge walls of text and put emphasis on certain words, phrases, or elements on a webpage. Also, well-designed websites typically layout their content in an “F” reading shape or “Z” reading shape.
- Take Content Seriously
When designing a website, it’s not enough to make it look good. The content should also complement just how good your website looks. If you want users to appreciate your website more, you need to balance great design with compelling content. It’s your job or your copywriter’s to make sure that you regularly post valuable content on your website to keep users and potential customers engaged and interested in what you publish.
Conclusion
Following these good web design principles can significantly improve your website’s performance. Some aspects of it also affect your SEO performance and the quality of the user experience that people get whenever they visit your website.
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