The 10 Commandments of Web Design
Thou Shalt Help Them Navigate Easily
Navigating through your website should be simple and smooth, not a 40-years-long walk in the desert. Be the fearless leader that you are and provide your site visitors with an intuitive and straightforward structure. There are three important elements you want to pay attention to:
The Menu: This is your visitors’ compass. It should be present on all site pages, always on the same spot. Make sure it’s immediately visible at any given moment.
The Site Tree: This refers to how you choose to structure your website, or the order of the pages and sub-pages. For a simple navigation, you want this structure to make sense. You want to minimize the time it takes your visitors to locate what they are looking for.
Content Hierarchy: In addition to keeping navigation simple, you want to make sure your site structure serves its original purpose. If you have an online store, for instance, you will prioritize your products and collections in the content hierarchy. If you are a blogger, you will prioritize your most recent posts, etc.
Thou Shalt Put Content Above All Else
Being a website owner means making a commitment to producing high-quality content that authentically represents your brand or your organization. The site design is crucial, of course, but a beautiful site will only get you so far with your visitors. It is the content that makes visitors scroll and browse, subscribe to newsletters, make purchases, and keep coming back for more visits.
‘Content’ refers to texts, media and features that you add to your website. Images, videos, sounds, blogs, descriptions, blog posts, lists, forms, animations – all of these are pieces of content that help gear up your site for stronger performance.
Don’t be sloppy with content, and that’s a command(ment).
Thou Shalt Go Mobile
Check this out: More than half of consumer interaction with brands happens through mobile devices. The big names in the tech industry are looking into the mobile industry as the future, as this Google announcement shows.
The conclusion is that a mobile website is absolutely a necessity for creating a fully functional online presence. Luckily, our sites optimize your website for mobile screen sizes!
Thou Shalt Note the Color Palette
Colors are a fundamental element in web design. One of the first things that stands out when visitors go on your site are the colors. The color palette you choose for your site establishes the mood and reinforces the message you want to convey to your visitors. That’s why the choice needs to be an informed one, based on compatibility, color psychology and usability principles.
Thou Shalt Not Stray With Fonts
Site owners often forget to pay enough attention to the fonts on their sites, which is a shame because fonts are such an important component in getting web design right. Want to make sure your site doesn’t suffer from font-neglect? Keep these three things in mind:
Don’t use more than two or three different fonts on your site. The more the merrier does not apply here.
Texts are there to be read. Make sure your font scheme, the size and the spacing you apply make the text crystal clear for reading.
Fonts have a personality and a tone of voice. Make sure you work with fonts that reinforce your brand rather than contradict it.
Thou Shalt Beautify and Beautify
We're all about making you look fab online. There’s so much you can do to improve the look of your site. Beautifying features, include (but are not limited to):
Parallax scrolling for a dynamic look.
Gorgeous video backgrounds.
Icons.
Captivating Cinemagraphs.
Thou Shalt Prompt Action
Call to Actions, or CTAs, are what makes the website reach the goals that you have set for it. Are you trying to get visitors to listen to your music, download your eBook, book your vacation rental, or schedule a consultation appointment? CTAs are how you direct them to perform these actions.
Your website gives you plenty of opportunities to make powerful CTAsprominent. Just make sure you make the most of it.
Thou Shalt Not Leave SEO to Chance
Our websites are 100% SEO friendly, which will give your site a vital push with search results ranking. However, gaining and maintaining a high ranking on Google and other search engines requires a pro-active approach in refining and improving your site settings.
Website owner, it’s time you educate yourself! Visit our blog’s SEO section and learn more on how to get your site found on search engines.
Thou Shalt Engage
Being a website owner is ultimately a social endeavor. You may not see your site visitors, but this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t strive to connect with them. Establishing a relationship with your audience makes your brand or organization more present in their lives, and will translate into further communication and business.
Use these tools and features to engage with your site visitors and form this relationship:
Email Marketing Newsletters.
Social buttons.
Facebook comment boxes.
Thou Shalt Not Clutter
You can get very eager when creating a website, but don’t let your enthusiasm get the better of you. ‘Less is more’ is not just a cliché, it could be your best friend when you design.
Adding too much content, filling up the screen with crowded texts and overlapping images, not leaving any “white space” for breathing – all these are the symptoms of online hoarding, a condition that, if not treated on time, may cause slow loading time, hurt your site’s UX and also really mess up its looks.
And because we really love you, here’s an eleventh commandment as an extra :)
Thou Shalt Not Stop Once the Site Goes Live
*This is one extra commandment that we want you to remember – the tasks of a website owner do not end once you hit the Publish button and send your site out into the world.
If you want your site to attract new visitors as well as recurring ones, and if you want to rank nicely on search engine results, you will need to keep your site updated with fresh content, to touch up the design here and there, and to stay tuned to new developments in web design and tech news.
