Web Design Best Practices Checklist For 2022
Designing or redesigning a website can be more complicated and tedious than you would’ve thought it would be. You may be obsessed and caught up with the aesthetics, but let me tell you - it is more than just which color shade perfectly fits the background. However, beyond having a visually pleasing website, the challenge lies more in making it stand out from among 1.8 billion others.
More than anything else, a website should be designed to be functional. Its degree of usability should be paramount to its pretty face. Many components should be considered when designing a website, and a very crucial aspect is user experience (UX). How enjoyable it is to navigate your website is what entices potential clients and is one of their significant reasons to stay.
This article will spare you from identifying which website design characteristics you should put your mind to. We’ve collated and formulated a web design best practices checklist to guide you as you reinvent your web design or launch a new one.
Defining User Experience Goals
Web designers should pour their efforts towards enhancing a website that promotes an efficient user experience. Thus, the following elements below serve as the goals they have to achieve to satisfy the user experience.
Virtually pleasing and branding-appropriate design. It comes with no question that a good first impression must be upheld. It is what piques a user's interest and drives them to remain on your website.
Slot in the SEO Ranking page. Suppose you find your website on the first page of a search engine, especially among the first three results. In that case, it is an affirmation that users have found your content reliable, and the strategies you have applied to increase user experience have worked in your favor.
Smooth UX flow. A seamless user flow is the first step to client conversions. It is usually correlated to simple navigability and functionality. Once achieved, your website will be perceived to be reputable and efficient.
Showcase the Brand’s Identity on your website. Your brand’s identity should stay coherent across all your platforms. When your company’s branding is established on your website, it helps you boost your brand’s awareness and identity. In effect, it promotes retention from your customers.
Low bounce rates and high conversion. An indication of effective user experience is when there is a significant decrease in bounce rates, which measures the rapidity of your customers' presence on your website. More so, a good website can also be quantified based on the number of converted users.
Web Design Best Practices Checklist for a Great User Experience
Determine your target users.
The initial step to optimizing your website is to determine your target users. By tracking down their web behavioral patterns, interests, and needs, it will be much simpler to tailor your UX design. Above all, it ensures valuable lead and conversion rates as the users who visit the website are filtered out. However, as an additional note, allot time to analyze your competitors’ websites and identify which elements work perfectly for them – incorporate those design elements to your site to encourage more audience. But never forget to embed personal branding elements to differentiate your website from the others.
2. Simplicity.
What you must put into mind is that people do not come to your website solely to appreciate its design. The main objective of their visit is to gather information about your product offering. Therefore, those design elements that serve no function should be eliminated. Unnecessary design elements will make the user experience difficult and might be sometime overwhelming.
If you are particular to your website’s usability, then it can greatly help for your website to be simple. Simplicity may be a vague topic to discuss. Nevertheless, you may apply this principle in common elements such as in your website’s choice of color scheme, typefaces, and graphics.
For your color scheme, you may opt to use a maximum of five different colors (plus-minus two), based on The Handbook of Computer-Human Interaction. Basically, it wouldn’t hurt to use fewer colors.
As for your choice of typefaces, it is recommended to use legible, basic, and minimal script fonts. At the same time, the font color must be in contrast with your background color for it to be clear and visible. The usual standard for typefaces is to apply on a maximum of three varying typefaces, which will correspond to three various font sizes.
Finally, as for the graphics, only use them when it is necessary for a user to perform a particular functionality. Your graphics should only supplement the functionalities, so don’t just add them on a whim.
3. Navigability.
Ideally, your visitor should be able to navigate your site conveniently without having to worry about where to go or what they should click next. Thus, when designing your website, it is crucial to intricately plan how should navigation on your site works — through this, you will be able to give a simple user experience.
In order to optimize navigation from your website, you may opt to keep the structure simple by placing the basic functionalities at the top of your page while including a search bar while you’re at it, so it’ll be easier to look for keywords. You can also add navigation in the footer of the page and some hyperlinks for important parts of your site. But ultimately, make your website as easy and functional to navigate as you can.
4. Effective Branding.
Whatever is on-trend when it comes to the web design best practices checklist, you should never forego your company’s branding.
Branding is what separates you from your rivals. It is one form of communicating with your customers. Ergo, your branding elements such as tagline, colors, and brand voice must not be absent. Otherwise, you will compromise the relatability and familiarity of your product to your users.
5. Visual Hierarchy.
Being able to arrange and organize your website elements is closely related to the principles of simplicity and navigability. It is because you have to construct your website in a manner that users will gravitate towards the vital functionalities and elements. Keep in mind that in terms of optimizing for an exemplary user experience, the target is to lead the visitors into completing their desired action most naturally and delightfully. By planning where to position the contents of your website, their colors, and sizes, you can showcase your website in such a way that visitors will be inclined to the important functionalities and elements first.
6. Responsivity.
Did you know that almost 90% of people leave a website because it is not compatible or does not display clearly on their devices? So, a part of the web design best practices checklist is to apply responsive design. Responsive design simply means having your website be highly and structurally flexible across varying devices.
Furthermore, also ensure that your website is accessible to everyone by making it perceivable, simple to operate, understandable, and robust.
Conclusion
For you to create and maintain a website with utmost efficiency, you can take note of the web design best practices checklist above. By following the aforementioned guide, the user experience will be improved and, in return, translate to leads and conversions.
If you want to boost the leads and conversions by refining the design of your website, you can check out SmartVAs for experienced and competent web designers and developers. They can help you tick off the website design best practices checklist!