10 Tips For Effective Web Design
In this article I will give you 10 tips to make your web designs and layouts effective and not only have your users appreciate the look and feel of your site but also have them act on whatever it is that you are looking for them to do.
Less is more in web design. Back in the 90's and early 2000’s, it was about creating these crazy designs with prominent background images, etc. The problem with that, is nobody cares. People these days just want a website that is easy to navigate and gets straight to the point. Keep your site simple with a minimalist design and just enough text to get your point across. People are very inpatient and just want to get what they are looking for. They do not care about some extravagant design, at least not in 2019.
Keep your design and content consistent across your entire website. Things to keep in mind are font family, font size of headings and paragraphs, colors, content, image styles. You don’t want each page to look different than the other. As far as the layout itself, it is ok to have a bit of a different layout on the landing page, but inner pages should all have the same general structure.
In addition to your site being simple to use, make sure it is readable. One common mistake that I see is with large showcase areas with a background image, the text is placed over then image without having the image use some kind of dark overlay. This makes the text look hard to read and just looks messy. Be sure to create an overlay using CSS or just darken the image. Make sure your paragraph text is not too small and has a decent line height so that it is not all scrunched together. Spacing is also very important. Keep enough margin and padding between elements.
In 2019 and beyond, there is no excuse to have a website that is not responsive. At the very least, all the text should be readable. This is easy to accomplish using media queries and CSS Grid. You can also use a framework like Bootstrap which is “mobile first” by design. More people use the web on smartphones than computers, your site needs to be responsive.
