Web design encompasses a variety of disciplines and skills in the creation and maintenance of professional websites. The different disciplines of website design generally include user interface design; web graphic design; content writing, including standardised code as well as proprietary software; website authoring, which includes SEO (Search Engine Optimisation); and search engine marketing, which involves paid placements, organic listings and organic views. A website’s success largely depends on how effectively these different disciplines are applied. A website’s effectiveness lies in its visibility in the search results and how easy it is for potential customers to find it. Many potential customers will conduct a thorough online search before making any decisions.
Things to Consider
Meet user expectations
It is essential for all websites, especially those that aim to achieve high-quality content and meet user expectations to create an effective layout and navigation. Many websites that fail to meet the expected user experience and high-quality content requirements experience low visitor traffic and a low conversion rate. Users may be turned off by a website that does not display expected elements in an effective layout and navigation. Visitors may also be disappointed with websites that do not provide expected webmaster services.
Social media presence
Some factors that contribute to the success or failure of a website include its layout, content and how accessible it is to its visitors. In addition, the use of social media can either positively or negatively impact the success of a website. A website that promotes social media presence is likely to achieve higher traffic and, therefore, more conversions. Moreover, a website that does not make use of social media is likely to have a low conversion rate and a poor user experience. Thus, a website should have an effective layout and navigation to make it easy for visitors to interact with the website.
Accessibility
Another factor that makes websites successful is the effective use of their elements and how accessible they are to all devices. For instance, a mobile website must provide its users with effective navigation to ensure ease of browsing. Furthermore, the effective use of white space and clear navigation links ensure that the pages load faster. Websites must achieve the desired loading speed for their images, videos and other elements.
Fluidity
Effective use of white space and clear navigation links helps in providing an effective layout. Elements can be set up on empty spaces to add drop-down lists, checkboxes, radio buttons and text input boxes. These make the elements accessible to users without any problems. Elements and menus can also be arranged in rows or columns. Websites can achieve a fluid effect by placing similar elements at different places in the layout.
Visibility
Having an excellent website design and layout will ensure that your site offers a good user experience. Visibility is an essential factor in ensuring that your site gets good exposure and traffic. All the information and the interactions must be visible to its users. Your website must make it easy for visitors to locate what they want and find what they need.
Clean layout
Good usability starts from a clean layout. In other words, a user-friendly web site doesn’t have broken links, missing text and other typographical errors that hamper the usability of the site. Another factor that affects usability is the presence of distracting question marks. With distracting question marks, users are more likely to leave your website and explore other options.
Typography
A good user experience starts with good typography. Typography refers to the arrangement of text elements on the page to make them readable. It can include things like using a style for each letter in a word and using boldface for important symbols. All these elements contribute to improving the overall layout and readability of the page.