Web design mistakes are as challenging to pinpoint as effortlessly they can be made. They are so much more than rudimentary problems like broken image, a misspelled word or a form that isn’t sending. These mistakes are foundational and make their presence felt loud and clear to a website visitor.
In this article, we discuss celebrated web design practices that every business website must make use of.
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Showcase Visual Hierarchy
Visual hierarchy in website design entails the arrangement, colour, size and contrast that optical element depicts. It spells out the relative prominence and the sequence in which humans notice these elements.
It is an important way for web designers to draw a visitor’s attention to priority elements first. For example, skilled web designers use the knowledge of popular reading patterns like F-pattern and Z-pattern to understand the way most visitors scan through a web page. They align relevant information to the left and use crisp, bold headlines, bullet points and other such attention-grabbers tricks to break up paragraph blocks.
In webpages like ads, where visitors scroll through in Z pattern, modern web developers place essential information in the corners and orient other information along the top and bottom bars. Font size also plays a significant role in creating visual hierarchy breaking the top-down rule.
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Spread Out Your CTAs
Smart CTA design and smarter placement are the secret mix for optimizing conversions. While most businesses like to believe that placing CTAs at the top of the web page design is the optimal thing to do, as visitors spend the maximum amount at this section of the page, it’s not always the case. It’s still better to take down the persuasion attempt and spread it out across the page. In fact, most engagement happens below the fold of a webpage.
Businesses can hire designers to place CTAs at the end of the web pages, in the sidebars, in pop-up messages and even in email marketing, if need be. The main focus should be on the flow of the UX to ensure that the CTA placement is noticeable but not disruptive to the audience.
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Focus on One Thing at a Time
Given that website users form design opinions in 17 ms, intricate web designs can scare them away. Low visual complexity is a modern website visitor’s delight. Websites designed on structured layouts are, in fact, more appealing to users because of their familiarity. Successful businesses thus choose to go down the conventional route when it comes to picking web layouts. Following conventional formats helps conform with the user’s idea of what a website must look like. This is the reason why most websites come designed with single column layouts and tall pages, keeping minimal distractions in the visitor’s field of vision.
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No False Bottoms Please
A False bottom or what is more commonly known as the logical end is an illusion of completeness on a web page. It is a point in a web page where a visitor believes the page will not scroll further when actually there is more content below that point.
Web designers must ensure that every web page reeks of continuation instead of completeness.
Business websites that steer clear of full-screen hero content avoid false bottoms. A skilled web designer can help you incorporate large banners, carousels and even videos in the hero space by adding content peaks above the fold to give users an idea to scroll further. Web pages designed sans any contrasting lines and wide spaces between content leave no illusion of a false bottom. It’s an excellent practice to interrupt content with an ad or a social share icon only after informing the visitors that additional information follows.
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Decide Between Tabs and Accordions
Tabs are used to present sections and categories in a design format, from where a user can select an option to change the data that is displayed on the screen. The accordion is used to present data on a screen too. While tabs are horizontally aligned, accordions are vertically stacked.
Experienced web designers decide between tabs and accordions based on the amount of data they have under each section. If there are only 3–4 categories and the data is lengthy, then tabs make a better choice as they allow users to see both types and data in one viewport. They also add the scroll option, in case there is more data. The choice between tabs and accordions also depends on the architecture of the website, on every page. Websites with vertical navigation do well with accordions to keep the pattern the same. Businesses must also assess the length of the categories/options when making this choice.
In the End:
It is the little things that make all the difference. Caught up in cutting down the time to market, or creating a novel end product, businesses sometimes overlook time tested web design basics. But, no more! These web design advanced practices can refine user engagement with your web page, landing you better conversions.
Thinking of incorporating these web design best practices into your website design, get in touch with our web design team today!
