Web design is the process of creating a website’s visual appearance and layout. There are many online responsive websites out there that allow you to create your own website without coding. But it’s more complicated. It involves planning, designing, and arranging content and other elements on a webpage to create an aesthetically pleasing and functional website. There are principles of web designing that a designer should keep in mind when creating a design for their website.
Purpose
Your web design should cater to the users’ needs. It can be achieved by ensuring each page has a clear and straightforward purpose, enabling users to easily engage with and understand your content.
You should eliminate any confusion or uncertainty that users may have when using your site. For example, if the navigation, responsive, and design of the site are simple, users may be able to comprehend how the system works and find it difficult to navigate from one point to another.
Your web design should have a clear structure, use visual cues and provide easily recognizable links to help users find what they want. Ultimately, users need help navigating your website to be able to use it.
Simplicity
Simplicity is key to enhancing your website’s user experience, responsive, and usability. Remember: less is more. When users visit a website, their main objective is to find information rather than to admire the design. Therefore, simplicity should be prioritized over complexity in web design.
Limiting the selection of colors to fewer than five is advisable to enhance customer engagement and provide a positive user experience. Users will likely feel good and enjoy interacting with your website by choosing pleasing color combinations.
In terms of fonts or typography, ensure that the text on your website is easily readable. Additionally, limit the number of fonts used to a maximum of three throughout the website. Additionally, only bombard your visitors with a little text. Instead, utilize white spaces.
White space or negative space is a blank area of a webpage, such as the space between graphics, margins, columns, lines of text, or images. It is not just empty space but an essential aspect of web design that allows elements to exist and creates a sense of hierarchy through typography, color, and other visuals. A page that lacks white space and is usually filled with text or graphics can appear cluttered and overwhelming, making it difficult to read.
Visual
Visual, such as still photography, illustration, video, and graphics, represents the company’s spirit and reflects its brand personality. As the first impression of a website is often visual, use high-quality images to convey professionalism and establish credibility with visitors.
On the other hand, visuals may also represent the elements on the website. Therefore, ensure that the arrangement of your elements is in order. It can be achieved through various means, such as size, color, imagery, contrast, typography, whitespace, texture, and style. One of the key purposes of visual hierarchy is to create a focal point that directs visitors to the most significant information on the website.
Directing users’ attention to particular areas of the website by utilizing visual elements in moderation can aid their navigation from one point to another without the need for conscious decision-making.
Pattern
Pattern refers to the reading pattern of the website’s visitors. Visitors tend to scan text on a website in an F-shaped pattern. This is because users focus their attention on the top and left areas of the screen. The F-shaped layout mimics this natural pattern as the Western reading pattern follows a left-to-right, top-to-bottom sequence. Therefore, a well-designed website should consider the reader’s natural scanning pattern to optimize its layout.
Another reading pattern is called the ‘Z’ layout. It is a crucial design principle where the eye follows a specific path: from left to the top right, then down to the left side of the page, and finally, back across to the right again. This pattern is useful for landing pages and pages with minimal information where the call-to-action is essential.
On the other hand, the pattern may also refer to the grid layout of your website. Designing with a grid system can provide structure and organization to your website. Using a grid makes aligning different elements easier and keeps the content clean and visually balanced. The grid layout consists of columns and sections that create a sense of order and balance, resulting in a visually appealing website. Use the same pattern throughout your web pages to make them look uniform.
Content
A successful website has both excellent design and compelling content. Great content can be persuasive and entice visitors, ultimately converting them into customers through persuasive language.
Adapting the writing style to the users’ preferences and browsing behavior is crucial. For example, users skip over promotional writing, lengthy text blocks without images, and content without keywords marked in bold or italics. Additionally, exaggerated language is mostly ignored. Instead, use straightforward language about the business and avoid marketing-induced, company-specific, or unfamiliar technical terms.
Load Time
Visitors may lose interest and leave if a website loads too long. Research suggests that almost 47% of web users expect a website to load within 2 seconds, and if a website takes longer than 3 seconds to load, visitors may choose to leave. Therefore, it is helpful to optimize the sizes of images used on the site, combine your code into one central JavaScript or CSS file to compress HTTP requests, and minify JavaScript, CSS, and HTML to speed up the loading time of a website.
Flexibility
As more individuals use mobile devices for internet browsing, it is crucial to consider creating a website with a responsive layout adaptable to various screen sizes.
Mobile devices continue to dominate content consumption. Therefore, it’s essential to design websites with both desktop and mobile devices in mind. It ensures that headers, paragraphs, and other visual elements are optimized for any screen and that buttons are user-friendly on small screens. It’s also important to ensure that your website loads quickly and that you have a responsive web design on both devices. About half of the internet traffic in the Philippines originates from mobile devices. Therefore, it is essential to have a website design compatible with desktop and mobile devices.
Suppose your website is not compatible with mobile devices. In that case, you have two options: create a new responsive layout, which will adapt to various screen sizes, or develop a separate mobile site optimized only for mobile users.
Partner to Success
Partnering with a professional web design agency can take your online presence to the next level. Let us help you create a visually appealing, user-friendly and responsive website that engages your audience and drives results!