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.

1. Pick a content management system with accessibility features.

You can design your website using one of the various content management systems that are available. Drupal and WordPress are two popular examples, although there are plenty other choices.

Once you’ve selected a CMS that meets your needs, be careful to pick an accessible theme or design. For accessibility-related advice and pointers on developing accessible content and layouts for that theme, go to the theme’s documentation. The same rules should be followed when choosing modules, plugins, or widgets.

Make sure that components like video players and editing toolbars allow the creation of accessible content. For instance, editing toolbars must to offer options for accessible tables and headings, and video players ought to support closed captioning. It should also be possible to access the CMS administrative tools (such writing a blog post or leaving a remark).

2. To properly organize the structure of your text, use headings.

Users of screen readers can traverse text using heading structure. Screen readers will have no trouble understanding the content of your website if headers (h1>, h2>, etc.) are used correctly and strategically.

Make sure to follow the proper heading sequence, and use CSS to distinguish presentation from structure (Cascading Style Sheets). Instead of choosing a header based solely on how it appears on the surface (which can confuse users of screen readers), design your text using a new CSS class.

Examples of headers used correctly include:

• For the page’s main title, use h1>. Other than the website title and the titles of individual pages, refrain from using a “h1” tag.
• Use headers to denote and organize the structure of your content.
• Avoid skipping heading levels (such as moving from a h1 to a h3; this will make screen reader users wonder if there is material missing).

3. Include appropriate alt text for images

For screen reader users to grasp the message that is being sent by the usage of images on the page, alt text for images should be provided. This is crucial for informational visuals in particular (such as infographics). If an image has text in it, that text should also be included in the alt text, which should contain the message you want to express through that image.

The one exception to this rule is when an image is only used for decoration; in this situation, the alt text can be left empty(link is external) so that the screen reader user is not diverted from the page’s more significant information.

Screen readers will read the file name if there is no alt text when an image is the only content of a link. Always include alt text when using images as links.

4. Give your links names that are distinctive and informative.

Use wording that accurately represents the link’s destination when incorporating links in your article. The phrase “click here” is inefficient for screen reader users and is not regarded as descriptive.

Visually impaired people can use their screen readers to search for links just way sighted users do when they scan a page for linked text. As a result, users of screen readers frequently fail to read the link in light of the remainder of the page. The context of links is correctly explained to screen reader users by using descriptive language.

Since screen reader users frequently scan the links list using the initial letter, the most distinctive content of the link should be given first.

For illustration, if you direct people to a page titled “About Us”

• You should refrain from saying, “Click here to read about our company.”
• Instead, add, “Read About Us to discover more about our organization.”

5. Use color sparingly.

Approximately 8% of the population suffers from red-green color deficiency, the most prevalent type. These people won’t be able to interpret your message if you only use these colors (particularly to denote required fields in a form).

When utilized to identify and arrange your material, color has significant advantages for users with learning difficulties and other disability groups.

Use color to appeal to both audiences, but also be sure to include other visual cues like an asterisk or question mark. Make sure to use visual separation to separate content blocks from one another as well (such as whitespace or borders).

You can use a variety of tools to assess color contrast, which will help you make your page as visually accessible as possible to people with impaired vision or different degrees of color blindness.

6. Design your forms with accessibility in mind. 

The screen reader user does not have the same indications as the sighted user when form fields are not properly labeled. The kind of information that has to be entered into a form field could be impossible to determine.

Every field in your form needs to have a strategically placed, elaborative label. For instance, if a person’s name is in the field, it should be suitably labeled as either “Full Name” or divided into two separate fields with the labels “First Name” and “Last Name.” To link the label text to the form field, use the label> tag or an ARIA property (see tip #9).

A person should be able to tab through the form and fill out every field before reaching the “Submit” button; otherwise, they may not even be aware that there are extra fields. Basically, the visual order should be followed by the tab order.

Consider utilizing fieldsets to organize related or similar fields if you have any. For instance, “Personal Information” could include fields like “Full Name” and “Date of Birth.” A screen reader user can keep track of their progress and get the context they might be missing while filling out the form by using this sort of form organization.

If a form field has to be filled out, it should be identified as such and set up to notify screen reader users. Some screen readers will not speak the asterisk, which is a common way to indicate that a field is necessary. For visually impaired individuals, those with learning difficulties, and those who speak English as a second language, asterisks (or comparable visual cues) should still be utilized. ARIA required=”true” and ARIA required=”false” can be used to tell a screen reader if a field is mandatory or optional. The user must be informed of the submission confirmation and any problems after submitting the form. We advise mentioning any error numbers in the page title (after the user submits) so that the user is alerted right away that the page contains mistakes. When a user submits a form with mistakes, they should be directed to a submission page that details the errors and offers a quick path to them.

Finally, using CAPTCHA to validate submissions is difficult to use and should not be done. To prevent spam submissions to forms, WebAIM has a handy list of accessible alternatives to CAPTCHA (link is external). 

7. Use tables for tabular data; do not use them for layout.

Users of screen readers see more verbosity when pages are laid out using tables. Screen readers notify users that there is a table with “x” number of columns and rows whenever they come across one, which detracts from the content. Additionally, the order in which the text is read could differ from the way the page appears visually. Instead of utilizing tables to layout a website, utilize CSS for appearance.

Use headers for rows and columns to help explain the relationships between cells when a data table is required (i.e., when you have a set of data that is best comprehended in a table format, such as a bank statement). Use the “scope” attribute in HTML to identify any complex tables that contain several cells that relate to one another in a certain way. HTML5 table captions can be used to provide users with more details about how to read and comprehend the relationships between the tables.

8. Ensure that all content may be logically accessed using only the keyboard.

Users with mobility issues, such as those who have sustained repetitive stress injuries, might not be able to operate a trackpad or mouse. These users can access content by pressing the “tab” or “arrow” keys on a keyboard or by using alternate input methods like a single-switch input or a mouth stick. The tab order should therefore correspond to the visual order so that keyboard-only visitors can properly browse the site’s content.

Markustudio a freelance web designer in Manchester providing web design, logo branding, print, SEO and digital design services. If you are interested in any help when it comes Web Design & Development. Feel free to Contact Us.