15 Web Design Principles for a User-Friendly Website

Imagine going into a shop to find brand new clothes for work. There are stains on the floor as well as shelves that are not organized. You also notice something oddly smelling as you look around. What would you do if you were to leave the retail store to buy something from the shop?

Design of the store influences how users behave. This applies to websites.

An analysis of 612 users from Clutch showed that 83 percent of users take note of when a website's layout is aesthetically pleasing and up-to-date. Additionally, half of participants would leave an online site when they feel the information isn't relevant or does not meet their needs.

Then, how do you make a web page that customers will like?

This is what this post is all about. This article will explain why good web design is essential and provide 15 design rules you can use to create a professional website.

What are the reasons why good Web Design Important?

Once a lead is introduced to your website, it establishes the first impression that shapes the future interaction with your company. At this point, where they make their first perception of your company.

The website you have created also communicates the identity of your company, its vision and place in the marketplace. If you have close competitors who offer similar products having a website that makes people think "wow" can make the difference and raise your brand awareness above other competitors.

The search engines look at how users respond to websites before making their rankings in search results. If your bounce rate is low and visitors frequently browse through multiple pages on your site then search engines may rank you higher than a competitor with a high bounce rate.

15 Principiale of Effective Web Design

For help in creating the perfect website, here are 15 principles of web design (plus examples of websites using them efficiently):

1. Pages Should Be Easy to use

According to Clutch's research into users' experience on websites, it was found that 94% of respondents viewed website navigation as the "most important website feature."

This isn't a surprise. When a user of a search engine visits your site looking for information on "mobile design" and isn't able to locate it, then the next step is to click "back" and visit a different website.

How can you make the most of well-planned navigation? Take inspiration from The Cool Club's website.

If you visit the homepage of Cool Club The layout of the site is very clear. It is possible to navigate the main product sections (like "card games" as well as "bucket lists") by clicking the icons on the left-hand side, as well as navigate through the "about" and "contact" pages using the links located on the right.

The Cool Club's product pages are also easy to use. They currently have an interactive card deck that has 54 different cool designs and corresponding pages. You simply scroll down and select the card that you'd like to know more details about.

Also, ensure that your header and footer consistent throughout your website.

2. Always Leverage Negative Space

Negative space (or "white space") is the region surrounding the subject on a page, no matter if they be images, videos texts, buttons, or even text.

A lot of enthusiastic marketers try to fill every free space available on a webpage, hoping that giving visitors additional information will help them become more engaged. However, this often results in overwhelming and confusing pages.

This is where the negative space can be found. Negative space is used to highlight important elements on each page, as the lack of color draws the visitor's eyes to brighter areas.

Naturally, "use negative space" isn't a way to "create a boring white website." Instead, you can leverage space using your brand colors, just like Garoa does.

Garoa's home page uses a cream-like palette that creates a sense of ambiance, but still makes use of negative space. It's the result that you focus is on the introduction material in the "skincare for the fall" section at the top instead of other less significant sections.

3. Pages should be consistent, However, they should be engaging.

If you hear the names of brands like "Cadbury, "Hershey's," or "Nike," the vision of their fonts, logos and design styles likely comes immediately to your mind. That's the power of consistent branding.

In designing your site, craft pages with the same elements in order to create a brand a clear visual identity. It's a good idea to:

• Keeping spaces between visual elements the same between pages
• By using color palettes rather than random color combinations
• Establishing layout guidelines for lengthy-form content like news pieces as well as blog posts
• It is recommended to use a template on your website to create all the pages

Pages that are consistent don't have to appear uniform. Instead, you can achieve consistency and engagement by mixing different elements.

For example, you can use different fonts and colours for H1,H2 or H3 headings. You can also modify the layouts of various kinds of pages in order to create a variety.

4. Embrace Complementary Colors

Complementary colors are combinations of shades that you could mix without making your design appear overwhelming or ugly.

The way colors display on a screen follow that of the Red, Green, and Blue (RGB) model of color instead of the Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black (CMYK) model that is used in printing. Painters typically also employ the Red-Yellow-Blue (RYB) color model, which takes complementary colors as red-green, blue-orange, and yellow-purple.

This is available on the Swab The world website.

The image below shows the blood cancer charity is using the color magenta with shades of green. They change these colors to complementing colors when you visit different website sections (though each color has similar saturation, so the branding stays consistent).

Complementary colors are an easy concept to incorporate into your design. If you want to make things easy, select two complementary colors and then add them to contrast elements (like an H2 or Body text). Also, you can use several shades of the same color on each page.

5. Design With Your Target Audience in Mind

When you visit The Cool Kids, Garoa, and Swab The World's websites, you'll see that each site has its own unique "feel." This "feel" comes from tailoring the design of the website to the users.

Individualization is the main goal in this case. We all prefer to buy products and services from brands we are comfortable with and influenced by. In fact, research shows that 72 percent of customers prefer purchasing products and services from businesses who "align with their beliefs and values." Thus, if someone visits your website and sees their goals, values and values reflected you can expect them to purchase from the company.

To personalize your website design to your audience, consider:

• Images that resonate with the people you want to appeal to?
• Which tone is best to your intended public (for example simple, elegant, bubbly, etc.)
• What is the topic your targeted customers come to your website to read about?
• How you can convey your company's positioning using your website design

Bonus points if you can make use of website automation to provide a personal experience that is based on the profile of the user and previous interactions with your brand.

It might be helpful to take inspiration from rivals or companies that offer different things to your target demographic.

6. Fonts should be readable and accessible

Also, keep an eye on the trends in fonts across other sites when choosing the right font. In 2021 Data science researcher Michael Li analyzed the fonts of more than 1000 websites. It found these trends:

• 85percent of fonts don't make use of serifs (the tiny lines that are added for newspaper type)
• The five most popular fonts are Sans Serif, Arial, Helvetica, Helvetica Neue, and Roboto
• H1 headers are 58% probability of having no serifs (compared to 93% in paragraph text)
• The two sizes most commonly used for paragraph fonts are 14 pixels and 16 px

You could choose to take advantage of this information to select the font that is similar to what users are searching for on websites. You could also decide to do something distinct.

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Virgin is a brand which chose to go with the second choice. Virgin employed at least five fonts on the image below. They separate the sections of the webpage and create a seem more appealing.

7. Follow Fitt's Law and Hick's Law

Psychologist Paul Fitts first developed Fitt's Law in 1954, but the concept is still relevant to web design by 2022. The Fitt's Law states that the dimension of an object determines the time taken for one to get there.

When it comes to web design, or the User Experience (UX) context This means it will require less time for users to click larger buttons or more time to click on smaller buttons. To take advantage of Fitt's Law You should design your CTA buttons huge and visible so they're easier to click.

"Easy" is a key word here. Hick's Law, developed by British psychologist William Edmund Hick and American psychologist Ray Hyman, says that the people get tired each time they make a decision.

The more choices visitors to your website are asked to take, the higher chance they'll be fatigued to follow through.

8. Utilize Invariance to Highlight Important Information

When something's "invariant," it stands out as a distinct option from several very similar options. One of the most prominent examples of invariance is the highlighting in plans on pricing pages like this one by Box.

It's not the only method you can use invariance. It can also help create a visual hierarchy for your pages to highlight key content and direct users to important parts of the page.

Take an examination of how Frans Hals Museum used invariance to establish an image of hierarchy on its website:

The order of the image is in the following order: The "welcome" sign as well as the photos, the "buy tickets" sign, and the "all exhibitions" sign, then the rest of the content.

To use invariance to create an individual hierarchy for your site, you can rank elements on your website in order of importance. Then, adjust each element's size, color, and position until the visitors' eyes go to every element in the sequence you want.

9. In CTAs Make Use of Clear Language Customers Will Be Tempted To Click

The importance of having your buttons big and easy to click, but size isn't the only aspect you must think about when designing buttons.

The clickable buttons can be descriptive and convincing simultaneously. They create curiosity about the subject matter that the button connects to, as well as provide a compelling reason for them to click it.

Another way of doing this is to utilize specific text for your buttons, such as "click here to check out our blog," "find our secrets to marketing here," and "here's our 2022 research report." Another is to make your buttons visually exciting or distinctive.

Rainforest Protector took both approaches. Rainforest Protector allows you to navigate the Amazon rainforest by visiting various places. Every location's button has the image of the location and an option similar to "visit this village."

10. Utilize The F Pattern or Utilize The Z Pattern

In the last 13 years, scientists of The Nielsen Norman Group (NN Group) used eye-tracking to see how 500+ individuals interact with content. They then came up with the F pattern that states the first thing that people do is scan down the webpage, and then read in left-to-right lines. This is how it works:

It is possible to leverage the F design on your site by structuring your content to follow it, or by using a different model.

Facebook is famously known for its Z-shaped design on their homepage. When you visit the page, your eyes go to the "Facebook" logo, then you click on the "login" link, then to the image to the left and then towards"create an account. "create an account" button.

11. Good websites are fast and mobile-friendly

At the end of the fourth quarter of 2021, 54.4% of website traffic globally was generated by mobile devices. Therefore, if your site doesn't support mobile devices, you may cut down on traffic.

The speed of a website also affects its organic traffic. Research from Google indicates that 53% of people quit a website when the site loads for greater than 3 minutes.

The designers of this 1917 movie decided to do. 1917's website provides an immersive experience for viewers to be engrossed into the story. It's specifically designed for smartphones, so that you can use your finger to move around in the battle trenches during World War One.

If you're paying attention to the 1917's website uses its F pattern.

12. Break Text Into Bite-Sized Chunks

Consider this: you search on the internet for "mind games" and come across a website that appears promising. However, when you visit it, you're overwhelmed with huge chunks of text which make it difficult to understand.

Just like many others who have clicked off the website (no matter how promising the contents! ).

Eye-tracking research from Eye-tracking research from Missouri University of Science and Technology has shown that visitors to websites spend on average 5.59 minutes studying text. If they can't consume your text in that timespan, it's unlikely you'll engage them properly.

This issue can be solved by splitting your text into small chunks. Additionally:

• Utilize brief sentences
• Beware of colloquialisms
• Give definitions to any industry-specific words you use
• Beware of "purple prose" (unnecessary metaphors, adverbs and adjectives)

13. Utilize Grids

When we talk about "use grids," it doesn't mean the website should look like the appearance of an Excel table. Instead, you should divide your site into distinct sections that serve certain functions so that visitors are able to find information quickly.

It is not necessary to utilize grid lines to accomplish this. Make distinctions in grid spaces with color as well as negative space and shading like Atlason has done. Atlason's home page features innovative and best-selling products in grids. Since visitors will likely be looking for these products and grids can help them locate them quickly.

14. Keep Balance in Mind

• Through the symmetry (including bilateral, circular or translational Asymmetry)
• Utilizing complementary colors or contrasts
• Utilizing similar elements and sizes
• By using repeated patterns

You can see balance in action on Woven's website. The website employs the color pallet of a balanced with black and white, to create contrast within the text, as well as an asymmetry that draws the viewer's focus to the information.

15. Pay Attention To Details

Gestalt theory says that people see something as a whole prior to focusing on individual components. Like Kurt Koffka said: "The whole exists independently from the elements." Although people typically reference Gestalt theories regarding psychology, it applies to web design as well.

It is important to pay attention to the small details on your website to ensure your design looks professional and complete. When creating something, it's easy to concentrate on the most important aspects like headings, pictures, and CTAs and forget other things like:

• Icons for headers and footers
• Social buttons for media
• Text spacing
• Typos and grammar errors
• Browser compatibility
• Image sizes

Make sure you check these aspects before clicking "publish" to ensure that your site is professional. It is possible to overlook small flaws, but visitors won't.

Summary

A well-designed retail store enhances the experience for customers, whereas a poor one could forever put customers off your brand. It's the same with web design.

A visually pleasing website can be more than a mere fun undertaking. It will help you:

• Conveyors with professionalism
• Create trust and confidence with visitors
• Stand out from your competitors
• Draw in organic traffic from search engines

Leverage the web design principles that are discussed in this article to create an online site that will make your people look at the site and say "wow."

After we've covered all we know about web design and web design, we'd love to hear from you. What do you notice on a brand's website? Also, do you apply some of the principles that we've not stated on your site? Let us know in the comments below.

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