The Five Rules of Smart Web Design that Every Beginner Should Know About!

Anyone who wants to have a robust online presence today needs to have a website. From large enterprises and government organizations to cab aggregators, schools, and hospitals, every institution has a website. Having a site is the minimum requirement for anyone who needs to share information, collect data, advertise or transact. That is the reason everybody creates a website for his or her work, and we already have close to 2 billion sites as we step into 2018. So, if you are planning to build a website for your business or work, you need to make sure it stands out in the crowd. Here are some of the tried and tested rules of website design that you need to keep in mind to get ahead of your competitors.

Control bounce

 Bounce rate refers to when a visitor leaves a site or webpage only after a few seconds without taking the desired action. There could be three reasons for it – the page was not what the visitor was looking for, it was not engaging enough, or it took too long to load. Good web design would be able to address all three of these to prevent users from leaving the page too soon. Here’s how it works:

• Let’s say a user is looking for web design services in a particular location, he or she will come across countless service providers in the search engine results page. However, only the top few sites will get a visit. There are many ways to improve search engine ranking of websites, and SEO is one of them.
• It is not enough to bring the visitor to your webpage. You should have enough valuable content on it to ensure that he or she feels compelled to navigate the different sections of the website, and also come back later for repeat visits.
• If your webpage fails to load within 2 to 3 seconds, it is very likely that an impatient visitor would leave your site and look for alternatives. You can improve the page load speed by using the right mix of themes and plugins, and by also optimizing the content so that it does not become too heavy while trying to add more features.

Do not distract the visitor

 Many designers make the mistake of putting too many things which distract the visitor from the core message of the website. Here are some of these that you need to avoid:

• Internal linking useful for any site, because it provides additional, dependable information to the visitor, and also increase the chances of multiple page viewing. However, every sentence having a link inside can distract the user from the core content. The same goes for authority linking, which encourage the user to leave the site.
• As per website design New York, social media buttons are crucial for any site today, but they can be a distraction too. While social media sharing is highly beneficial, you need to put the buttons towards the end of the page so that the visitor has had a chance to browse all the content of the page.

Keep responsiveness in mind

Today, more than 50% of the traffic that a site gets comes from some form of a mobile device. That is why any website which wants to have a great quantity and quality of visitors needs to have the site built in a way that is responsive to mobile devices. Here are a few easy tips for ensuring the same.

• The font type and size can affect how text looks on the desktop and mobile devices. The ease of visibility should be tested on different devices at the content creation stage so that the fonts, colors, and sizes can be chosen correctly.
• We already mentioned that too many authority links should not crowd a webpage. However, apart from distracting a visitor, the multiple links, when viewed on a mobile device, sometimes display two links so close together that it becomes difficult to ‘click’ with fingers. So the mutual distance and sizes of buttons or links or other icons should be chosen in such a way that a human finger can easily click on them.

Security above all else

Every year, we hear about countless reports of breaches in website security, and 2017 was no different. There were several data breaches in websites of diverse companies from sectors such as healthcare, sports, entertainment, business services and so on. Security is critical to ensuring that your user data and company information does not get leaked. Both website owner and website visitor can benefit from it.

• Every e-commerce website has transactional elements, and people are expected to provide sensitive information such as bank details to purchase products or services. Buyers will only trust a site that has SSL certification for example, RapidSSL Certificate and enough security measures in place.
• Many websites become repositories of critical user data. If a site cannot ensure the security of that data, users will stop visiting the site, and even if they do visit, they will skip the part where they need to provide their information.

Keep the headlines catchy

When a visitor skims a webpage to see if it looks interesting and useful, he usually does not go too deep into the text but looks for paragraph and article headings. That is why the content of a website needs to be designed with headlines in the correct order of H1, followed by H2 and so on. Apart from making the page more reader-friendly, the correct format also improves the site’s reputation in the eyes of the search engines. The web designer and programmer also need to keep this requirement in mind, and create the webpage accordingly.

Designing a website that pleases users and search engines, while doing both better than its competitors is no easy task. The initial aim is to create a page that will attract visitors. However, the real challenge is to get those visitors to navigate the website and get the core message that the company is trying to convey. We believe these five tips will help you achieve precisely that.

Author Bio – Barrack Diego is a freelance content writer. He has written many good and informative articles on different categories such as Web Design, SEO and Business. He is very responsible towards his job. He loves to share his knowledge and experience with his friends and colleagues.