With web design, as with any field which requires expertise, there are certain core principles that exist. These principles are so important that they are non-negotiable if any website design is going to come anywhere close to achieving its aims. In other words, these principles are non-negotiable, not for a clients and for website designers.
What we are saying is that even if a business owner wants their web designer to cut corners and create a website that does not adhere to these web design principles, the web designer should refuse. Likewise, when a business owner employs a website designer or web design agency, any hint that they are going to skip on some of these principles should be seen as a red flag. Here are those 7 web design principles, in no particular order as none is more important than another.
#1: Page Loading Speeds Should Be Fast: Nothing will kill a website’s effectiveness and Google rankings more than pages that load slowly. Visitors hate it and click away, and Google knows when it is happening and subsequently downgrades that website’s ranking. Avoiding functions that are not necessary, optimising image sizes and ensuring that you choose quality hosting are just a few of the steps you can take to ensure that your website loads quickly.
#2: Aim For Consistency: When visitors are browsing through your website they have an expectation that each page will have a level of consistency with the others within the website. If, instead, every page seems like an individual website in its own right with different layouts, colours, graphics, fonts and so on, it can cause confusion and that is a sure fire way to lose visitors to your website.
#3: High Quality Content Is Essential: Every website must have content, but it goes beyond ensuring that you have half a dozen or so blog posts. The content needs to be relevant to the niche you are in, it must inform or entertain your visitors, and it needs to be written to a high degree of quality. Fail in any of these then your content is sub-standard and thus unlikely to encourage any visitor to hang around for any length of time.
#4: Avoid Annoying Pop Ups And Auto Play Media: Years ago, websites could basically get away with anything, so pop-ups and audios or videos that auto-played the second a visitor landed on them were all the rage. Nowadays they are more likely to send your visitors into a rage so avoid them completely if you wish to retain visitors and present your business in the best possible light via your website.
#5: Make Navigation Easy: The less there is to confuse your visitors within your website design the better, and an effective way to achieve that is by having simple and easy navigation throughout your website. All it needs is a menu at the top where visitors can easily click through to another part of your website, and return again to the home page.
#6: Images Should Be Relevant: We have all landed on a website and been confronted with a plethora of images, photos, and graphics. Unfortunately, some website designs overdo these graphics and seem to have multiple images for the sake of it. Ensure that your website does not have any superfluous images and that those which are used, are relevant to your business.
#7: Test, Test And Test Again: If we were to emphasise one of these principles more than any other it would be this one. From the second your website design is complete, through its launch you must be testing to ensure 1) That it functions properly, and 2) To try to improve its performance. We hope you see #1 as a no brainer, and #2 as an excellent means of continually enhancing your website.