Essential Website Features Every Web Design Company Should Implement
Essential Website Features
When designing a new or redesigning an older website, the aesthetics usually confuse designers. Should I apply the blue theme? Should the logo be on the left, or right? Will an animated GIF look good in the middle? These are the questions designers often ask themselves
With over 1.8 billion websites currently running and capturing user attention, you have to ensure yours is not only a pretty page on the internet. Every website design company strives to give users a better user experience, accessibility, and easy interface.
With over 1.8 billion websites currently running and capturing user attention, you have to ensure yours is not only a pretty page on the internet.
Still, many designers fall short during the process due to following improper guidelines of the principle. Skylight Designs has assembled a list of features you should implement in your next redesign or launch.
Contents
Guidelines For Website Design
Consider Simplicity
Visual Hierarchy
Easy Navigation
Consistency is the Key
Responsiveness
Accessibility
Ensure Conventionality
Credibility
User-Centric Approach
Summarizing The Features
Final Word
Guidelines For Website Design
Consider Simplicity
While the appearance of a website holds its importance, most people do not visit a website to evaluate its slickness. They intend to find specific information or complete an action. Therefore, unnecessary design elements that have no use on a website make it overwhelming and difficult for users to accomplish their tasks.
Simplicity is the best approach if you consider usability and experience. Do not go too simple if you have essential page elements present. You can employ simplicity using various forms such as:
Color scheme (recommendation is to use five plus or minus two-color scheme for best aesthetics)
The typefaces you use should not be too artistic with minimal fonts in scripts. Use a maximum of three typefaces in different sizes
Add graphics only if there is a function to perform or help a user in certain action
Visual Hierarchy
Visual hierarchy means organizing the most important elements and making it easy for visitors to gravitate and interact. The principle closely ties itself with simplicity as it encourages a designer to emphasize important elements only. Remember that the goal of every website company is to complete the desired action for a user in a way that feels enjoyable and natural. You can adjust the size, color, and position of certain elements while structuring your website in a way that entices visitors to interact.
Easy Navigation
One of the crucial parts of ensuring visitors finds what they seek is to give them intuitive navigation. An ideal scenario is where a user lands on a website and does not need to think much about going next. It means that you should give smooth navigation from page A to page B without overwhelming a visitor. Some of the tips to make your website navigation friendly includes:
Keep your primary navigation structured and simple
Use navigation of footer also
Use breadcrumbs on each page except the homepage so users can remember their trail
Do not offer too many navigation options on a single page (again, keep it simple)
Include links and clearly state their position
Use a pyramid structure where ever page links eventually with the homepage
Keep the labels and location the same on every page
Consistency is the Key
In addition to keeping your navigation the same on every page, keep the website's overall feel consistent. Many web design experts in Ottawa and other areas fail to follow this principle that ultimately makes their final product overwhelming for visitors. Make a positive impact on user experience and usability by keeping colour schemes, backgrounds, typefaces, fonts, and writing tone consistent throughout the website.
However, it does not mean you have to stick to a tight consistency principle, and you can change the layout wherever necessary, such as landing pages. The idea here is to keep your users familiarized with the navigation and layout with consistency to steer them in the right direction.
Make a positive impact on user experience and usability by keeping colour schemes, backgrounds, typefaces, fonts, and writing tone consistent throughout the website.
Responsiveness
Today, most global views come from mobile devices, smartphones, and tablets. According to research by HubSpot, almost 93% of people leave a website due to failure to open on their device.
We want to show here that you have to make your website responsive and compatible with various devices that users operate. In the website design industry in Ottawa, this feature is termed design responsiveness.
Design responsiveness means investing in a website’s structure and making it flexible. A responsive site automatically restructures and aligns the content according to a device layout a visitor uses. A website design company can achieve this responsiveness through a mobile-friendly HTML template or by creating a website tailored for mobile responsiveness.
Besides mobile, check your website for cross-browser compatibility. Users will likely access a website on multiple browsers such as Google Chrome, Firefox, or any other. Open your pages on these browsers and identify the changes needed to adjust the display and responsiveness to evaluate the look of every element.
Remember to strike a balance between consistency and responsiveness to improve user experience and increase interaction.
Accessibility
Accessibility means anyone can use the website, even those with disabilities and limitations, without compromising their experience. Designers need to consider this factor in their UX plan to ensure accessibility remains function at all times.
Like responsiveness, accessibility also applies to the whole website (pages, structure, format, and content). Some of the guidelines set by the various website accessibility governing bodies state that:
The website has to be perceivable, so users remain aware of the content on a website
The functionality of a website has to remain operable in every sense
Content and alerts have to remain easy and understandable
A website can run across multiple platforms, devices, and browsers
Ensure Conventionality
One of the biggest challenges any website design company and even Skylight Designs face is balancing expectations and originality. Most of the users are expert internet navigators and have grown accustomed to certain conventionalities that include:
Placing the navigation at the left or top of the page
Placement of logo in the center or top
Bringing visitors back to the homepage with a clickable logo
Color changing on buttons or links when a user hovers over them
Using a shopping cart button for e-commerce websites
Ensuring manual buttons for sliders
While some designers ignore a few or more of these factors for uniqueness, this is a mistake. There is much more that designers can achieve within the constraints of these web conventionalities. You have to craft a memorable experience for users to ensure meeting their expectations. If you violate user anticipation, they may feel frustrated and uncomfortable with a website.
You have to craft a memorable experience for users to ensure meeting their expectations.
Credibility
Following the web, conventionalities lead a website to better credibility, which increases trust with a user. The factor of credibility goes a long way if you consider providing the best user experience possible.
One of the best ways to remain credible is, to be honest about the product or service offered. Do not make the users dig through hundreds of pages to learn about your offerings. Use the homepage as an upfront information desk to explain the value behind what you do and offer.
Bonus Tip: Create a pricing page and link it to the homepage. Rather than forcing visitors to contact for pricing, a chart will give them all the necessary information without wasting any time. Price listing makes a business website appear trustworthy and legitimate.
User-Centric Approach
At the end of the day, every piece of content, navigation, accessibility, and responsiveness makes the website user-centric. If you are not designing for them, then who else?
While all the points listed give you a suitable foothold, the final point of improving website design is to perform user testing and gather feedback. Have some testers who have never seen your website and let them test the design without any biases.
At the end of the day, every piece of content, navigation, accessibility, and responsiveness makes the website user-centric.
Website Re-Design Services
Skylight Designs offers website re-design services that includes all aspects of web design featured in this article. We provide website redesign that we can create with either 2D and/or 3D that are integrated with content management systems. If you would like to see an insightful article that talks about website redesign services you can check out this website redesign article by DesignRush, which explains everything you need to know to launch a website made for success.
Summarizing The Features
Keeping all the related elements of the website simple
Enabling visual hierarchy to ensure easy navigation for users
Providing an easy and intuitive navigation panel for users
Keeping everything within the website consistent
Responsiveness and compatibility across browsers and devices
Accessibility without compromising user experience
Using web conventionalities for better interaction and response
Earning credibility to make a website trustworthy and noticeable
Keeping everything user-centric
Final Word
Hopefully, the guidelines mentioned above will help every company and professionals in web design Ottawa. These points will help you set the pages and structure the website as a whole. Follow these features with industry best practices to make the most out of the time and effort into designing. Remember to keep user experience and their requirements in the notice.
Skylight Designs is a Canadian-based website design company that offers premium design services with all available features. Feel free to contact us or visit our website for pricing and other information.
