Do you have a website that requires a better web design? Stuck? Have no ideas and don’t know exactly what else you could improve on your website’s design? No matter how talented a web designer may be, keep in mind they all started from somewhere.
Did you know that more than 30% of visitors who go onto a website will leave if the website is deemed to be unattractive or unappealing? An aesthetically pleasing website has been proven to improve traffic flow, audience attention and, in some cases, improves productivity & sales.
In this article, we will discuss five crucial tips on improving the design of your website.
Review Your Styling Sheets
Checking out your website’s styling sheet, known as CSS coding, can be a crucial part of attracting an audience to your website via the design. The website’s styling sheet has all the information about your website’s aesthetics, including fonts, colors, sizings, and more.
Keep in mind that consistency throughout a website can help create brand awareness and be deemed appealing. A rule of thumb is that the styling of a website should contain the following aspects in specific segments, sections, and pages:
- A color pallete.
- A logo of your brand or company.
- A body and heading typeface (Don’t use too many styles for this as it won’t blend well. Make sure the typeface is legible and suits the theme.)
- Images (Well sized and relevant.)
- Buttons for functionality.
- Form fields and radios or check boxes for accessibility and usability.
- Segments and layouts of pages.
Now keep in mind that the listed elements are not limited to just them, they are the most basic elements that should be found on a website.
Test The Functionality Of Your Website
With any website, checking the functionality during and after deployment is crucial to ensure no errors arise when visitors are navigating around the site.
These days, websites contain buttons, forms, internal and external links, scripts, and animations, to name a few. While some elements may seem like they function correctly, this may not be the case at all, with errors unexpectedly rising. With a full functioning website with no errors, visitors will have a much more immersive and enjoyable experience meaning they will repeatedly visit the site in the future.
Testing can be quite simple by just using all the functions possible and seeing if errors come. Other methods can be by checking internal and external links with dead link checkers or broken link checkers.
The final testing functionality method would be to run a log as you use the site, which will report errors for you to debug once you have finished using the site.
Simplify The Navigation Bar
Many users know once you go onto a website with a complicated navigation bar, chances are you will leave because you won’t be able to find what you need quickly or easily. The navigation bar on a website helps users move around the website to access what they need.
It’s like a map of the website, and as you click through, you end up at a new location. Once this “map” is complicated or overly populated, it becomes harder to find specific pages and information, thus making people leave.
Simplifying the navigation bar will enhance the website’s usability, making it a little more enjoyable for your visitors to use. Be sure to add relevant topics under main headings and keep them to important pages. For the less important pages, add internal links to the essential pages for ease of navigation.
Ensure Responsiveness
Optimizing your website’s load speed is equally important as the web design and making it look aesthetically pleasing. A page that takes too long to load will keep your visitors away rather than attracted to your site. There are many ways to optimize your website’s speed, and it is quite easy to do. Follow the following tips:
- Compress the images you use on the website to reduce page sizes. This, in return, will improve the responsiveness of your website.
- Reduce the use of GIFs to keep the size of the webpage as small as possible.
- Try not to use heaps of heavy animations. These will cause lag to the website and will make your web design an unjoyful experience for your visitors.
- Keep your code nice and clean. Having code that is not optimized and lengthy or bulk code that you don’t use will slow down your website. Rather than having these, cut the areas you don’t need out of the website coding and keep it condensed.
These are just a few ways of improving the responsiveness of your website. There are plenty of other techniques out there that go more in-depth. These are the easiest ones to implement.
Using The Correct Headings & Subheadings
Our final tip to improving your web design is a simple one, often overlooked. That is the usage of correct headings and subheading sizes and styles. With the correct use of headings, your website’s content can be much more organized and visually appealing.
Apart from this, it will help optimize the SEO of your website. Search engines like Google, now in fact, reward correct use of headings and subheading styles by ranking websites higher in search engine results. Who would of ever thought using headings correctly could have such a big impact on the entire website design and functionality.
Wrap Up
Improving your web design can seem like a stressful task but can be quite fun and rewarding as you learn more and develop a better understanding of web design and your audience’s needs. Using the five crucial tips listed above, you will be able to attract more repeated visitors to your website and rank higher in search engine results. If you need more help in improving your web design, possible consult with a web developing firm or company.
Big Kitty Labs is one of the leading software development companies in Columbus Ohio that has been developing applications, websites, and software for over 10 years. Contact us for free discovery and consultation on your next project!
