Web design is like any other creative discipline. It has its rules. To ensure that your web design is balanced, content, navigation, visuals, and images must all be in harmony. How can one achieve good website design foundations? Let’s see.
Principles of good web design
1. The foundation of purpose is purpose
Website messaging and calls for action (CTAs), are crucial to achieving its goals. Sites can serve one purpose: to promote purchases, tell a story about a company, or provide tutorials. Your site should be able to capture its purpose in just a few sentences. Think mission statement.
You shouldn’t make a site design as you go. The purpose will help you plan the content and design. Winging is not a practical design strategy.
Knowing your audience is key to establishing your site’s purpose. Who are they? What information do they require? How will your site help them? Your audience’s demographics, pain points, and preferences will help you choose the best direction for your website.
2. Content is the key to the meaning
High-quality content is helpful, clear, and directs your audience to the actions you want. SEO should be considered and integrated into content. You can use SEO with care and taste. Use keywords and phrases in a conversational tone to convey your message.
The purpose of your website is important to determine the content that you will need. Using a content-first approach, which means using real content right from the start of the design process, allows you to identify the needs. It is easier to identify changes as they occur than to drown in revisions and updates at the end.
3. Engage people with visuals
Every design element should communicate the brand’s identity. Images, photos, and other graphics can balance text and give the eyes a break from the monotony of reading.
A hero image is a great first impression. Scroll-triggered effects and animated transitions keep people moving. They make navigation more than a tedious task. No matter what brand you are, visuals must add energy to the design and not just take up space. Software companies, food trucks, and accountants all have the ability to be creative with their sites’ graphics while remaining true to their brand.
Visuals should look professional and high-quality. Use clear photos with a balanced color scheme and graphics that are the right size and resolution. A bad visual can ruin a great design.
4. Harmony is what makes a design sing
Each element of a layout must work together, right down to its HTML or CSS. It won’t feel right if the button is too big or in a different color. Interferences can distract from the user experience and cause disruptions. When something isn’t working, it can be difficult to see the greatness of what you have done. Bad user experience can lead to website visitors abandoning you, which could impact your Google ranking.
Good designers make things easy to use and know what fonts, visuals, and types of navigation will grab attention. They know how everything will fit together. Many new designers feel compelled to pack as much excitement into their layouts as possible. Too many elements can distract us from our focus.
Web designers who are skilled in web design know-how to balance the weight of elements and when to use restraint. They can design pages that are easy to navigate. The brand identity should also reflect this sense of harmony. All aspects of the site, from its tone and voice to the color palette, should be consistent.
5. Typography influences perception
Typography can be used to express thoughts. The shapes and stylizations of letters communicate meaning, as well as the words themselves. Typography can be described as a decoder ring that transforms an author’s ideas and into a visual representation.
Fonts should be appropriate for the design’s tone and placement. For large text blocks, cursive fonts are not practical. They may be useful for decorative or heading purposes.
It is possible to lose important content by using the wrong font. Ask the scientists who presented the Higgs boson particle’s discovery with a slideshow featuring Comic Sans. This choice of typography sparked quite a lot of discussion. Who knows, maybe the critics were right. Make sure you know and love the reason why you chose a font.
6. Unification of the organization
Your content should be logical, flow, and follow a hierarchy. Your content should lead your audience to a conclusion. Each piece should build on the one before it. Every sentence should be more clear about your brand and purpose. This will keep readers interested in the next paragraph.
Use header tags to organize content and aid web crawlers in ranking your site for search engines. Headers can be used to frame the content you are building if you don’t have all of your final content.
It is also important to organize visual elements. Sections should be defined with graphics and images that complement the written content.
7. The tone is set by the colors
Simply Chocolate’s design reflects their brand and showcases their delicious chocolate bars by using their packaging and ingredients.
A design’s palette can communicate so much. You can make it playful for a toy company or serious for a website offering financial services. Color schemes can reflect the spirit and message of a brand.
Make sure you choose colors that reflect your personality and make it easy to read. To ensure that your colors are easily read, make sure to run them through a color contrast tester.
