It can be daunting to compete with the other billion websites out there and receive the kind of traffic you need. Nonetheless, by making your site more appealing to visitors, you can boost its performance and reap additional benefits.
In light of this, this article will examine 11 pointers for novice web designers to enhance their websites’ user interfaces and experiences. These suggestions are full with tried and true methods that you can use to make your vision a reality.
Eleven Easy Steps to Better Websites
1. Recognize Your Target Market
Knowing your target demographic is essential if you want to create a website that appeals to visitors and generates substantial revenue. Doing so improves conversions, raises interest among customers, and guarantees the longevity of the company. It’s one thing to know who makes up your audience, but it’s quite another to know what they want.
Maintain consistent communication with your target demographic and be open to suggestions and requests. Determine your goals after conducting an audience study.
Two, Pick a Stylish Layout to Work From
Even first-time visitors will have an easier time navigating a well-designed website. In addition, a responsive web design template ensures that your site works nicely on mobile devices. Because of the prevalence of mobile device use, this is an important topic to prioritize. Knowing your goals and the kind of material you plan to publish is essential when deciding on a website template.
One of the most important things you can do as a newbie web designer is to plan out your site’s content and the user’s path. The next step is to begin the design process. Zyro and similar tools facilitate this step. It’s a website builder with pre-made, professionally-designed templates that can be customized for any industry. Compared to developing it from scratch, employing a builder also saves you time and work. If you’ve never built a website before, this is a great place to start.
Considering that 94% of users’ initial impressions are based on visual factors, it’s clear how important it is to put time and effort into designing a website that makes a good impression.
3. Don’t overcomplicate your homepage; it’s the first impression.
For a homepage to be considered “simple,” only the most crucial features should be included. Improved readability keeps readers engaged. From a technical standpoint, it’s better to have a minimal homepage. One of the simplest pieces of advice for novice web designers is to have a site that clearly explains who you are, what you do, and what sets you apart from the competition.
It provides useful information and makes good use of white space, calls to action, and website design. Alternately, you may start with a wireframe and then do a user walkthrough. Study how similar websites have achieved success. Some easy homepage examples are Slack, Dropbox, and StudioPress.
4. Put Your Logo’s Colors to Use
Using the colors associated with your brand will help customers remember your company and your message. Think about the emotions evoked by various hues and choose one that fits your brand’s image.
Choose your brand’s colors early on. Integrate your brand’s hues into the design scheme. Make any necessary color changes to links, buttons, and dropdown menus to boost aesthetic value. After that, you should check how the colors seem on various screens.
Fifth, Use the Right Fonts
Fonts are essential for both design and branding. When deciding on fonts for your website, you should keep both form and function in mind. Use of appropriate fonts improves both the visual appeal and readability of a website. Web accessibility is another area that it focuses on.
Try out a few different typefaces to see which ones your readers prefer. Limit the selection of fonts. Find out which font complements your brand colors and website layout. For example, most website headlines are written in a sans serif typeface. If you’re looking for a new typeface, try Typography.com or Myfonts. Always keep in mind that it’s essential to choose only web-safe fonts.
Six, Integrate High-Quality Pictures
Images aid in communication, but those of high quality are especially useful. Including photos on a website not only enhances the quality of the site as a whole, but also improves the user experience, reduces bounce rates, and increases lead conversion. If you want to have an impact on your visitors’ emotions, use pictures of real people.
To avoid looking generic, though, you should avoid using stock photos. Apply proper SEO techniques by including alt text with each image.
7: Think About Including Videos
Customers will have a much easier time grasping your offerings if you include videos on your website. However, effective video marketing relies on strategic video placement and a duration that fits the attention span of the target audience.
To accomplish this, make and upload relevant films, such as how-tos, lessons, or introductions, that address your target audience’s needs. Put some thought into creating a captivating video thumbnail, and remember to keep the length of your video to no more than 60 seconds. If you click the play button, the video should start playing quickly.
Clarify the next step for the reader.
Websites with prominent calls to action generate more leads and sales from their visitors. There is no shortage of calls to action, but it is essential that you tailor each one to your specific piece of writing. With the help of the clicks generated by your CTA, you may improve your website’s analytics.
The best call to action to use will vary from web page to web page. Put the CTA in a prominent location among the page’s main links to increase the number of times visitors click on them. Spell out your meaning with the help of action words.
Cut down on the number of carousels 9
Using carousels detracts more from a website’s performance than it adds. Users are more likely to skip over the remainder of the slides if they don’t find something immediately relevant to their needs on the first. Carousel images can take longer to load, which might hurt a website’s search engine rankings.
Except in very particular cases, such as online shopping catalogs or online portfolios, carousels are rarely necessary. Instead, the photos should be stacked to make users want to scroll down. Making a long page with the end goal of raising user awareness is another one of the crucial web design advice for beginners.
Ten: Fine-Tune the Drop-Down Menu
Improving the navigation menu boosts user experience and search engine optimization. In addition, a well-organized sitemap benefits your Google search rankings when you optimize your menu.
Orbit Media found that there is a generally accepted convention for where to put things like menus and button bars on websites.
Some common layouts include placing the company logo in the upper left corner, the primary navigation bar across the top, and the contact us link in the upper right corner. It also assists to center your attention on the search bar. Alternately, check to see that the menu is appropriate for the page depth.
11: Use Peer Approval
In terms of consumer behavior, social proof is associated with the human tendency to follow the herd. You may boost your website’s credibility and, by extension, your lead generation, by including social proof in it.
Social media is ideal for implementing social proof. Using customer testimonials in the form of images or videos and weaving a narrative into the website’s content are two common methods.
Implementing First-Time Web Designer Advice
Making a website look good is only one of the design process. Some technical tips to help you improve your website’s layout are included. In this article, we discussed 11 simple and effective web design recommendations for beginners.
When putting these web design guidelines into practice, it is important to be meticulous without going overboard. You can learn a lot from other companies, but you need to keep your attention focused where it belongs: on your target market. Consistently updating and optimizing the website ensures that the content is constantly current. With any luck, you’ll see a major improvement in your website’s performance after implementing these suggestions.
Markustudio is freelance web design company that also offers branding, print, SEO Manchester , and digital design. Our professional staff is available to lend a hand in the development of a brand manual or the maintenance of brand cohesion. Together, we can develop a brand that is unlike anything else on the market and makes you stand out from the crowd. Get in touch with us right away to arrange a meeting.