Looking for ways on how you can effectively design your website? Check out these 5 key principles of effective web design to help you!
Designing a website is not just about the choice of colors and other visual elements you see in the screen. An effectively-designed website is supposed to be both visually-pleasing and functional. Therefore, it is important to consider user experience in the entire designing process to make sure that the design corresponds to the overall purpose of the website. In this article, we will tackle some of the basic web design principles that you can follow in order to make your design effective and successful.
Psychologist Paul Fitt's study about the human motor system revealed that it is possible to predict the time it takes for a human to select a target based on its distance and size. This law is applicable in design ergonomics simply because it allows the designer to effectively position the main actionable target on their rightful places. This is also why you will notice that most home pages of almost all websites have call-to-action buttons all over them. These buttons are usually emphasized either through size or color. If you want your website visitors to engage and interact with your website. make sure to "state the obvious" and make it easier for them to notice what you want them to.
Our constant exposure to gadgets and technology affected our attention span so much that it is usual for someone to just skim an entire page or screen of information presented to them. Another psychologist named George Miller examined a person's working memory and found out that we can only keep just 5 to 9 pieces of information at a time. Therefore, it is advisable for website designers to layout their content in a way that information is not presented in a bulk to the viewers or readers but is divided into small chunks instead. In that way, your viewers will most likely remember what they have seen or read.
Sure, spoon feeding your website visitors and readers is already a given principle but there are times when they will still not be able to find the exact information or function that they need. Therefore, your website should have a search button or a settings function where they can ask for user support just in case they still cannot locate what they need through the search box. This is also very helpful for visitors who wants to easily go to a certain page of your website.
The problem with some websites is that there are a lot of things going on in their web pages. For example, navigating through a sales page will make you see a lot of pop ups or clicking to some parts of the page will lead you to various product links or advertisements. While these things may be profitable for the website owner, they are actually a bothersome to most users. An effectively designed website enables its users to have a control the way they navigate the website and have a sense of freedom throughout the entire experience.
Last but definitely not the least, website designers should try the observe the principle of simplicity. It is nice to look at a website that is neat and organized without the clutter of unimportant elements that the user may not actually care about. Of course, this depends on the kind of website that you have but as much as possible, only focus and highlight the essentials. Too much clutter and information presented to your visitors may just actually lead them away from your website.