An Effective Website Design

Effective website design is one of the most important aspects of creating any website. When it comes to building a business website, most people become obsessed with aesthetics. Does that shade of grey look right? Should we place the logo in the center of the screen? What should we use for the hero banner?

However, if your website isn’t easy to use, navigate or understand, your visitors won’t care for the aesthetics. They will leave your website no sooner than they arrive. You must ensure your website is more than a pretty face. It must be designed for user experience, usability and user-friendliness.

The more enjoyable the website is to interact with, the longer the visitors will stay on your website, and the better are the chances of converting them into customers.

If you are wondering how to build such a website, read on. In this post, we share the top 5 elements of effective website design.

Clean Layout

Although the visual appeal of your website is important, most people don’t care about how slick your website design is. They want to find some information or take a specific action.

Any fluff elements will only make it hard for your visitors to achieve their goal. If user experience and usability is your goal, simplicity is the way to go. There are so many ways to create a simple, clean layout:

• Graphics – Use graphics if they serve a purpose; not because you want to. If graphics help the visitors carry out a specific function or complete a task, then go ahead.
• Colours – Avoid going overboard with colours. Use no more than five different colours in your design.
• Fonts – Choose fonts that are legible and minimal. Use no more than 3 different fonts in your website design.

Visual Hierarchy

Visual hierarchy is all about organising website elements in order of their importance. This is done either by colour, size, contrast, imagery, whitespace, typography, style and texture.

The primary goal of visual hierarchy is to create a focal point; this guides the visitors to the most important information.

When it comes to designing for user experience and usability, the aim is to lead visitors to take action, but in a way that feels fun and natural. By adjusting the colour, position or size of some elements, your web designer can structure your website to ensure your visitors are drawn to those elements.

It could be your primary marketing message, a trial offer, a lead magnet or a call to action (CTA).

Easy Navigation

Intuitive navigation is at the heart of good website design. After all, you want to make sure your visitors can find the information they are searching for easily and quickly.

Once people land on your website, they shouldn’t have to think about where to click or what to do next. Moving from one part of the website to another should be smooth and effortless.

Here are some things that our website designers based in Ontario do to optimize a website’s navigation:

• Keep the main navigation of the website simple.
• Include navigation in the footer section.
• Limit the navigation options on a page to ensure the visitors aren’t left confused.
• Include a search bar at the top of the site to ensure visitors can make a quick search.
• Our web designers use breadcrumbs on each page (except on the homepage) to ensure users remember their navigation trail.
• Include links in your website copy.

Grid-Based Layout

Grids give the design proper structure whilst keeping your content organized. The grid ensures the various elements on a page are aligned. Another benefit is that the layout looks clean and clutter-free.

A grid creates a uniform structure for your website design and arranges the content in a clean, neat structure. Full of columns and sections, a grid structure is rigid, ensuring the content lines up and feels balanced, creating an aesthetically appealing website.

Page Load Speed

Web visitors do not like waiting. If your website takes a long time to load, your visitors are likely to hit the back button in search of another website (most likely your competition), never to return.

Most online users expect a website to load in 2 seconds or less. The higher the load time of your website, the higher will be the bounce rate (the number of visitors leaving your website from the landing page).

There are many things you could do to improve the page load speed of your business website. Our web designers prioritize load time and put in every effort and look at every aspect to build a light, nimble and quick-loading website.
Here are some things we do to build a fast-loading website:

• Reduce the size of JavaScript, HTML and CSSS files.
• Keep redirects to the bare minimum.
• Optimize the code.
• Use fast servers.
• Leverage browser caching.
• Optimize images.

We Build Websites that Put Users First

Web design isn’t just about visual appeal. There’s a lot more to website design than visual elements. That’s where a good web design agency can help. At Magenta Web Design, we are committed to building websites that deliver extraordinary ROI for our clients. Get in touch with us today to discuss your website design project in Markham. Call 905-882-3145 now or book a 15-minute consultation with our team.