Website designing can become a complex process due to various factors that influence the code design. For instance, as a designer, you must keep the design simple, useful, and enjoyable to make it a successful website. Various tips can help you with this process of designing a successful website layout. In this article, we will discuss the top do’s and don’ts that you must keep in mind while designing your dream website. Additionally, these tips will also help you to increase the efficiency of the website UX.
The Do’s for Website Designing
- Maintain the Consistency of Your Website Interface
Consistency of website UX is crucial to ensure the quality of your website. It is one of the essential principles of designing a powerful web application. So, you must ensure that the website’s overall look and feel remains the same on all web pages. Design consistency includes various features like navigation, color schemes, typefaces, and writing styles. All these factors will have a positive impact on the overall UX of the Website. It will also help to attract the attention of all the customers who will be accessing your product.
However, it would be best if you initially focused on the usability of the web application. So, we recommend the readers to make the website usable first and then focus on consistency. This process will help you to overcome consistent but low design.
- Design the Navigation in an “Easy-to-Use” Manner
Navigation is an essential factor in ensuring the usability of the website. This feature acts as a powerful interaction technique that users will use on the internet. You must have a suitable navigation method on a website to ensure that the users can find what they are looking for.
Additionally, you must plan the design elements properly to ensure that you do not overcommit to this feature. For instance, you must apply the top-level navigation features only to the essential options that will direct the users to the website’s core parts.
- Maintain a Different Colour Code for Visited Links
It is easy to understand that links will play a vital role in helping your users navigate the website. You must ensure that the users don’t get lost in this process or unintentionally visit the same web page while navigating around your website. Allocating a different color scheme to the links that have been already visited is a great solution to this problem. It will allow users to know their past and present locations. This process will also help them to get a good idea about where to go next.
- Maintain a Simple Process for the Webpage Scanning
During the first visit, the user will probably scan the website instead of reading the entire content. For instance, when they come on the website for a particular task, they will scan it until they find what they are looking for. So, as a designer, you must help the users with their scanning process to increase your web page’s visual aesthetics. In this case, visual aesthetics refers to the attachment and presentation of data on the web page that helps in the data sorting process. This process is essential to ensure that all the users can access the content on their webpage to complete their goal.
- Respect the Importance of the Website Content
The data present on your website is as important as the designing process for the site. For instance, more than 90% of the web page data will be present in the form of written information. So, even if you manage to design a beautiful website, it would not achieve its full potential without any useful content. So, an excellent design with good content is highly essential to create the perfect website. In this process, the designer’s goal is to sort and arrange the data so that it is appealing to the visitors of the website.
- Ensure that the Website is Error Free
A small error can quickly destroy your weeks of hard work on the website designing project. Additionally, one error can give rise to many more problems on the entire website. For instance, a faulty link can easily make the user frustrated as they will continue to receive error messages due to an unresponsive web page. Furthermore, the media content on a webpage may malfunction due to broken images or videos. Lastly, you must ensure no typing errors in the content to avoid misleading your users.
- Minimize the total Number of Choices
The number of choices can favorably affect the decision-making power of the users. So, a low number of choices will help to ensure the accuracy of decision making. Additionally, a minimum number of choices helps to increase the interaction power of a website. So, while designing the core elements of the web application, try to include fewer variations in the web page’s functioning. This process will also help the users unleash and enjoy the website’s full potential that you have developed.
- Test Your Website on Multiple devices & browsers
As a developer, you must test the responsiveness of your website. Various tools can help you in this process and deal with the errors. A significant part of developing a responsive website is to ensure that your application is accessible on all mobile devices. LT browser is an amazing tool that allows you to test your web application on various mobile devices. This fantastic browser allows you to test the responsiveness of a web application on various ports and devices. Additionally, it helps you to perform live testing on over 25 devices. Thus, the LT browser is the best option to test the responsiveness of the website.
The Don’ts for Website Designing Project
- Don’t Make the Users Wait for the Website to Load.
The loading time of a website plays a vital role in maintaining the User experience. For instance, a survey suggests that 80% of the users expect their website to load within 2 seconds. So, it is evident that if your website takes longer than the expected time, the users might get frustrated and leave your website. Thus, speed should be a vital priority while building the web application. Furthermore, it would be best if you also tried to avoid blank pages during the page loading time.
Instead, it would help if you tried to display indication visuals to determine the possible loading period.
- Avoid Opening Internal Links in New Browser Tabs
As a developer, you must ensure variation in the behavior of internal and external links. For instance, you must ensure that all the internal links open in the same tab. This process will allow the user to use the back option for easy navigation. Furthermore, while opening the external link in a different tab, you must issue a warning before automatically redirecting your users. In this case, you can use specific text or visuals to address this issue and keep your users well informed about the navigation process.
- Don’t Use Lots of Typefaces.
Typefaces have become a common temptation for Website designers. For instance, you may be tempted to use several fonts or even upload your font while designing the website. However, you must try to avoid this temptation to maintain the consistency of the website visuals. Additionally, several different types of typefaces lead to confusion and distraction. It will ultimately annoy the user and force them to leave the website. At the same time, a consistent font helps to maintain the readers’ concentration and uplifts the visuals of the web page.
- Try Avoiding the Use of Too Many Colour Schemes on the Website
The use of typefaces is also an excellent option to avoid congesting your website design with too many colors. While applying colors to various website elements, you must ensure that you maintain the integral visual balance. The more colors you use, the harder it will be to achieve this balance. In simple words, the use of too many colors in website design is similar to conveying millions of feelings in a single sentence. Furthermore, too many colors will eventually confuse the readers about the design of the web page. Try to keep the color scheme consistent across the web pages unless you have to highlight any particular important segment.
- Don’t Show Automatic Pop-ups Too Early.
You must have noticed that various websites show pop-up messages about notification subscriptions. On these websites, you will receive this notification as soon as you visit the webpage. As a designer, these pop-up messages are one of the most annoying things you can do to your website’s first-time visitors. These messages are interactive and are typically used to show ads or promotional content. So, in most cases, the user closes these boxes without even reading the content. A good practice is to show your website’s potential before asking the user to subscribe to your content.
- Avoid Using the Generic Photos of People
The use of human faces is a very effective way to ensure the interaction of users. A medical survey suggests that the human brain pays more attention to faces or similar images. For instance, when we see human faces, we feel like we connect with people and not just use their creations. However, common malpractice related to these photos is known as “blind trust.” In this process, individual companies use insincere photography to build up the fake trust of the users. As a developer, you must remember that decorative photos do not add to the design’s value. Instead, they end up harming the overall User experience.
- Don’t Try to Overcommit to Promotional Content.
Promotional content on the website often acts as a double-sided sword. For instance, if you overuse promotions or ads on a web page, you might cover the website’s main content. Additionally, it becomes harder for users to accomplish their goals for navigation. Additionally, it would help if you remembered that the user would ignore anything that looks like an ad. This process is commonly termed as banner blindness.
The Verdict
Thus, we can conclude that there are various things that you must consider to develop a successful website. As a designer, your primary goal should be to ensure that all the users can enjoy your website’s benefits. A simple and visually attractive interface is the key to achieve this goal. Lastly, we would recommend the readers to use the LambdaTest browser to test the website’s responsiveness on various devices.
