As well as designing and creating business websites, web designers also have a very keen eye for assessing and evaluating existing websites and identifying whether a website is poor, average, great, or awesome. The poor or average websites will likely be basic, DIY websites, with few essential web design features that are likely in need of a website redesign.
Moving up the ladder we then have great, and awesome websites, which will probably have been built by professional web designers and include most, if not all, of the web design elements necessary to qualify a website as being better than most. As for what those web design elements are, most are known to the top web designers who might wish to keep them secret. However, we are going to reveal ten of those closely guarded web design secrets below.
Navigation And Site Structure Should Be Self-Explanatory: If visitors have to work out how to use and navigate a website it means they are not focussing on the content, offers, or calls to action. Make using the website so easy, that it barely requires any thought.
Minimise The Actions A User Has To Take: A website’s design should not force visitors to jump through multiple hoops to achieve anything. Make access easy, any forms simple to complete, and calls to action no more than a click of a button onscreen to activate them.
Direct The User’s Eyes To Focal Points: For the important content, images, offers, and calls to action you want visitors to see, there should be visual directions to send their eyes in that direction. Large or bold text, distinctive image borders, or graphics such as arrows are but a few ways to focus attention.
Never Be Afraid To Guide Website Visitors: As well as the ways to focus attention we just described, a website design should not shy away from simply providing guides and instructions to visitors to help them interact with the website.
Remember Text Will Be Viewed On Displays: When creating text for the website, it is imperative to remember that it is going to be viewed on monitors and mobile displays, not in a book. This means the text should be written and formatted to be precise, scannable, and easily read.
Simplicity Rules: No matter what the focus of the website is, there should always be a preference for simplicity rather than complexity. Web design is not an exercise in “the more the better”, but rather “less is more”.
Be Willing To Use “White” Space: Further to the desire for simplicity, and to make the website more visually appealing, the use of large areas of “white” space, or space of any colour provided it is congruent, is always preferable to filling the screen with superfluous features.
Use All Content Effectively: All the content on a website, including text, images, graphics, and videos should be organised appropriately, be clear in its message, and be relevant to those the website is targeting by using the language, jargon, and terminology they might expect.
Conventions Are Desirable: You will find that many of the design elements in the very best websites are those which follow recognised web design conventions. This suits website visitors and also means you do not have to reinvent web design.
Test Everything: The sooner you start testing a website as it is being built the better versus finishing it and then finding multiple issues, errors, and bugs. Better to fix a problem with a single feature than to try to fix an entire website.