10 Top Principles Of Effective Web Design

What is the purpose that you seek to achieve by creating the website? Is it to provide knowledge to the visitors, sell them a product/service, or anything else? This is the most important part as once you have decided what is the objective of your website, you can easily create a design keeping that in focus. From you, the homepage to all the pages including about us should have clear reasoning as to why are they here and how they would influence the visitors.

Consistent Design 

One of the major mistakes that designers do is that they try to make too much variation in the pages of the website. While little variations may not cause too much of a problem, but making a major design change destroys the flow of the website. Therefore, we would recommend maintaining consistency in the design. Even the small elements such as buttons, fonts, headings, etc. need to be consistent so as to make the website look amazing.

F-Pattern Design 

Studies have confirmed a specific reading pattern that is followed by the people going through the website. It states that people mostly read the content from left to right and then scroll down. Thus, when placing elements on a web page, the most important elements should be placed on the top left or vertically down to it. The less important things can be placed on the right side of the page.

Proper Whitespaces 

Many times designers want to utilize every possible space available on the page. The reasons given by them are many like placing content so as to improve SEO, making the website appear filled with content, etc. But, the problem that they ignore is that it becomes hard for viewers to sort out the content they came looking for. 

Also, since the majority audience now is coming from a mobile device, it becomes extremely hard for them to grasp so much information. Therefore, our recommendation would be to leave proper whitespace and always see how the design would look on small devices.

Grid-based layout 

Just like you have things spread all across the room, people hate when images, text, or videos are placed randomly anywhere on a web page. The page appears as a mess and people find it hard to find things they came looking for. In most cases, the user would leave the site without performing any action. 

Therefore, it is best that one has grid-based layouts to organize content, text, images, etc. Other than making the site appear in a structured manner, it also helps in creating a responsive design.

Image source: Welie

Typography and Readability 

The typography used on a website has changed a lot over the years. In the initial days, more and more designers used cursive fonts or fonts that were stylish. But, the latest trend is to use simple fonts and the important lines are made big and bold. 

Text size, fonts, etc. are mostly chosen keeping in mind the fact that most of the target audience comes from a mobile device. As such it becomes important to consider how the text would appear on these devices.

Image source: Daniellewalkerdesigns

Mobile friendly 

More than half of internet users come from mobile devices and as such one cannot ignore how a website would look to someone operating on mobiles. Designers nowadays firstly design the website keeping in mind mobile devices and then move towards their desktop version.

Less Loading Time 

In an era where getting the attention of a user is one of the hardest things to do, it’s almost suicidal if your website takes a long time to load. Therefore, one needs to pay a lot of attention to how much time it takes to load a page. Some useful tips are- optimize the images used, combine code into a central CSS or JavaScript file, and minify HTML, CSS, JavaScript.

Easy Navigation 

Would you spend hours on a site looking for a product/service you want to purchase? Most probably no and the same would apply to your users when they visit your site. Thus, you need to make the site in a way that a first-time user can easily find the thing they came looking for.

Colors and Images 

Colors play an important role in user experience. A good blend of color creates a soothing experience for the visitors. Always choose 3 to 4 color combinations and use them all across your website to maintain consistency.

High quality images that represent your business can be a major tool to attract customers. The only thing to keep in mind is that one should use a compressed image so that the page loading time does not get slow. Also, make sure that you have your company’s logo and name on the pages in a clear high-quality image. If you have not created a logo yet, you may use the free logo creator tool to make a good-quality logo on your own.

Designing a website that attracts and retains users is not a hard task if you keep the above principles in mind. What is your view? Do comment below.

Campbelljof is a Creative Head for Designhill, as well as a blogger and designer. He writes on topics concerning design, eCommerce, start-ups, digital marketing, and interactive content. His creative work has earned him several laurels over the years.