Do’s and Don’ts in Web Design

If you design websites, you know that making your designs useful and enjoyable is your top priority. It can be an overwhelming task for anyone who just recently started creating websites, so to simplify it, We’ve created a simple list of do’s and don’ts to keep in mind when designing your next web design project.

THE DO’S

1. Keep your interface consistent

One of the top principles of good UX is to keep the interface consistent throughout the entire product. The overall look and feel of your website should be consistent across all of your site’s pages. Consistency of navigation, color schemes, typefaces, and style of writing can have a positive impact on usability and UX.

2. Make it easy to scan your pages

When users visit your site they are more likely to quickly scan the page rather than read everything on it. For example, when visitors want to find specific content or complete a certain task, they will scan a website’s pages until they find what they are looking for. And you, as a designer, can help them with that by designing good visual hierarchy. Visual hierarchy refers to the arrangement or presentation of elements in a way that implies importance ━ e.g. where they eyes should focus first, second, etc.

Some practical tips that come to our mind are:

• Avoid walls of text: structure your information in chunks of text so the viewer can easily to digest visually. If you have a big text, structure it in paragraphs or bullet points.
• Put more visual weight on important elements: You can draw attention to specific call to action buttons or texts by using different font weight or color or use the heading tags (h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6).

3. Check your website for errors

A great webdesign project can be easily tarnished by a small error. Here are a few common problems to be aware of:

• Watch out for dead links: a user can easily become frustrated when they click a link on a site and receive a 404 error page in response.
• Check your website for typos: Often a website is the first introduction between you and your potential clients. One way to make the best impact you can is to use correct spelling
• Make sure all media content is loading correctly: no broken images or videos.

4. Engage users to scroll

Scrolling sends users deeper into the page and makes them invest more time in the experience, and this increases the chance that users will convert ━ e.g. buy something, sign up for a newsletter, or contact you. Despite that people usually start scrolling as soon as the page loads, content at the top of the page is still very important. What appears at the top sets the impression and expectation of quality for visitors. People do scroll, but only if what’s above the fold is promising enough.

Practical tip: Content at the top of the page sets initial expectations. If a page provides users with high-quality content, they are willing to browse for more content.

5. Make your website responsive

Today there are more than 5 billion devices running web browsers, so a website must not look good only on a desktop screen, but also on tablets and smartphones. A website is responsive if it is able to adapt to the screen of the client device. Responsive web design is extremely important nowadays and is in fact one technique you need to master as a web developer or web designer.

NOW, THE DON’TS

1. Don’t make users wait for content to load

Loading time is extremely important for user experience. As technology progresses, we get more impatient, and today, 57 percent of users expect a web page to load in two seconds or less. If a web page takes more time to load, visitors might become frustrated and leave the site. That’s why speed should be a priority when building a web application.

Practical tips:

• Avoid blank pages during loading. When loading takes some time, consider displaying a part of the content together with some form of visual feedback ━ such as a loading indicator.
• Optimize images. Images,  especially large background images, can take a lot of time to load. You can significantly reduce the loading time by optimizing your images.
• Measure your website’s current performance. Google’s PageSpeed Insights and Think With Google tools not only help you identify performance problems on your website, but they will also propose solutions to certain problems.

2. Don’t open internal link in new tabs

Users expect different behavior from internal and external links. All internal links should open in the same tab; this way, you’ll allow users to use the “back” button. If you decide to open external links in a new window, you should provide an advanced warning before automatically opening a new window or tab. This might take the form of text added to the link text stating. “opens in a new window”.

3. Don’t use too many typefaces

When you start building a site, it’s always tempting to use a lot of different typefaces ━ five or six different fonts or even upload your own. But, it’s better to avoid that temptation. Too many variations in font types can be distracting, confusing, and borderline annoying.

4. Don’t use too many colors on your website

Similar to typefaces, it’s better to avoid using too many colors in design. Applying color to a design has a lot to do with balance, and, the more colors you use, the harder it is to achieve balance. Using too many colors in design is like trying to convey a million feelings and messages at once, which can confuse the person viewing your design.

5. Use blinking text and ads

When creating ads and animations, don’t even consider using flickering flashing effects. Content that flashes or flickers can trigger seizures in susceptible individuals, and is likely to be annoying or distracting for regular users. Don’t unnecessary distractions make users dizzy, and can even trigger seizures in some people.

Conclusion