How to Create a Successful Web Design to Impress Visitors

You probably know this by now: A first impression is formed in the first seven seconds. That’s how much time you have to impress your website visitors. That narrow window is even less with websites for mobile users.

The Society of Digital Agencies reports that 39% of people will leave a website if it takes too long to fully load, especially images. They’re not impressed. In addition, a majority of marketing agencies believe poor user experience (UX) on websites is the most significant disadvantage they’ve seen among their clients. To top it off, as people browse a website, 38% will lose interest if the layout/content isn’t attractive.

Clearly, your company’s web design greatly contributes to the success of your website as a whole. Check out these major areas of web design that will help your website be successful.

More → How to Brainstorm for an Outstanding Web Design

Web Design: Functionality

When it comes to the functionality of your website, it’s challenging to understand the difference between web design and web development. Web designers create the visual elements of a website; web developers use programming language to bring the website design to life. A website requires both design and development to function the way it should.

Before you begin designing or developing your website, you need to determine its overall purpose. If you don’t know what you want your website to do for you, how will you know if it’s functioning correctly? What do you want website visitors to do? Do you want them to submit a form with their name and email? Do you want them to give you call?

Web design is led by specific business goals, so take time to consider what your objectives are before planning your website design.

Web Design: Navigation

Now you can brainstorm how you want visitors to go about exploring your site. What path should they take? Visitors strongly depend on a site’s navigation system to help them get to where they want to go. The navigation bar should be intuitive and user-friendly for desktop, tablet, and mobile users alike.

More → Website Redesign SEO Scams that Ruin Your Ranking

By the way, mobile usage increases by an average 58% each year, so when you’re developing your website, be sure to make it mobile friendly. Mobile friendly is encompassed in the larger practice of responsive design. Responsive design not only applies to phones, but also tablets, large computer screens, laptops, and full-size monitors.

However, responsive design isn’t the only element you need to include to make your website mobile friendly. For example, Google hugely supports Accelerated Mobile Pages (or AMP for short). Essentially, you can have your website built with these special blog pages for mobile devices. These pages load SUPER fast on phones. They have a little lightning bolt icon next to them in Google results, but you can see it only if you’re on a phone. Google actually gives AMP pages a boost in ranking.

Web Design: Layout

The layout of your website determines how each webpage looks. The layout consists of 4 key elements:

Whitespace

Whitespace refers to unused margins or empty space surrounding text, images, and graphics. A healthy amount of whitespace prevents webpages from being crowded and over-stimulating.

Flow

When you pull up a webpage, your eyes naturally skim the whole page, quickly taking in information and gathering first thoughts about the site. You’re experiencing the flow of the website as your eyes move left to right, then down.

Alignment

Alignment, which helps create flow, has to do with grouping elements on a webpage. The alignment determines the orientation and position of each entity on the page to create a cohesive and attractive whole.

Proximity

Logically, items that are not related are farther away from one another. Proximity for web design determines how close or how far away design elements appear in relation to each other.
As you can see, many design factors contribute to the success of your website. If you want to make sure your web design impresses visitors, and you’re still not sure where to start, don’t worry. Contact a professional marketing company who can explain everything you need to know. We’re excited to chat with you!

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