The digital space is forever changing and it can be tough for digital creators and developers to keep up.
A friend of mine asked me the other day, “What are the elements of a good website?” and it got me thinking… while it is nice to have a big, flashy website, if you haven’t done the basics right or implemented key principles, your website won’t perform as well as you might expect.
We’ve jotted down our key principles to help you tackle your first or next web design project.
Key Web Design and Development Principles:
Simplicity / Minimalism
Having a simple and clean website design will allow for a functional and easy-to-use user experience on both desktop and mobile devices.
Navigation
Make it easy for both your actual website visitors and Google’s Site Crawlers to navigate through your website. For visitors, try to keep it simple, intuitive, and consistent. For Google’s Site Crawlers, implement an XML Sitemap and submit that to your Google Search Console.
Content
The content that you have on your website, whether it be text, image, or video, make sure it’s good quality. Good quality content is what will attract new visitors to your website and encourage current visitors to come back. Good quality content could mean larger files which makes lazy load an important factor to consider as well as using a compression tool such as Smush.
Design with a grid layout
Building a website with the guidance of a grid layout is a great way to structurally design your site with various elements which at the end all lineup and work together. Try Elementor and WPBakery.
Website speed
We spoke about the importance of website speed and how to optimize it in a recent post, but website speed is one of the top key principles to a successful website. A fast website = retained website visitors.
Mobile-Friendly Design
How often do you find yourself browsing on a website via your mobile device? I know I do it more often than not, so it’s important to make sure your website functions to its best ability on both desktop and mobile devices.
Live Chat
It’s important to make it as easy as possible for website visitors to contact you. Usually, a clear and easy-to-use contact form works well, but with the ever-growing chatbot functionality, it’s recommended to implement some sort of live chat feature on your website that allows visitors to easily ask questions and receive answers.
Ready to develop and optimize your website?
Web Design and Development is an exciting and interesting field to be in especially now where many interactions and transactions are being done digitally.
Hopefully the above provides you with the guidance you need to tackle your next web design project. Feel free to message me on Whatsapp or via Email for assistance. 👋
