Hi, my name is Zach, Penang web designer, and today I’ll explain three core web design principles you should know to create a visually engaging website. Today, having a well-designed website will be a must to create a strong online presence. But why?
According to research, 38% of visitors abandon a website if they think the layout is unattractive. Of course, this opens the door to higher bounce rates, which affect the general performance of the site and its SEO, ultimately decreasing rankings.
By applying just a few best practices in web design, you will be able to ensure that your website gives a great first impression and enhances user experience, so people stay around longer on your site, ensuring better SEO performance and opening more opportunities for conversions.
In designing an appealing website, there are three fundamental web design principles you should be aware of: color, visual hierarchy, and navigation. Now, let’s learn about all of these in detail.
Color
The first is color. The proper blend of color enables you to establish your brand identity, draw attention to important elements, and encourage people to take desired actions.
First of all, you need to be aware of what color palettes suit your website. For instance, organic food companies tend to use green because that color represents freshness and nature. In contrast, other premium or high-end brands, such as Gucci, use a combination of black, white, and gold to establish the image of being luxurious in nature.
Understand the different types of colors and their meanings, and then pick a primary color that best represents your identity, along with secondary complementary colors.
These together will make up your brand’s color palette. Implement them across the site for the visitor to get a better feel for your brand. It will also help in visual harmony and cohesion.
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For example, this website uses yellow as a signature color, white to separate some visual elements as a background, and blue to add text and buttons.
The brand will ensure the color schemes are well-contrasted to maximize readability and navigation to keep the visitor’s eyes on the products and calls to action.
Scanning: Through strategic positioning of design elements, visitors will be guided towards the most important parts of the webpage. The important factors to be considered while laying out a design include composition, balance, white space, scale, and pattern.
First, apply the rule of thirds to give your site a cohesive structure. This technique dividers a design into thirds by means of a grid of nine boxes that make it much easier to align text and adjust object positioning.
For instance, take a look at how Apple puts this in practice by placing the headline, call-to-action button, and product images on its iPad landing page. Balance comes into play here, too-rule of thirds allow you to evenly set elements across center line, creating a balanced and symmetrical design, as seen here in Adam Danaway’s portfolio website.
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An asymmetrical layout can also be balanced. For instance, Mercedes-Benz has a large product image, which is offset with a much smaller text block, aligned left, on its landing page.
White space is another important aspect: used to break text and design elements into pieces and prevent the site from looking messy, which makes the visitor focus on an area that matters more.
However, you must be very careful not to overuse white space, as the site will appear empty. Give character to your design through the use of texture, like color gradient or 3D elements.
For example, a website uses subtle texture in its background and yet it has still managed to keep the text highly readable, while another makes effective use of white space to make those 3D elements pop out.
Scale is an important aspect in drawing attention to important information. Good principles for font sizes in text-based content include: three font sizes for the body text:
A very good example is Flex Academy, because it makes use of a very huge font size on its main copy, followed by small text that describes the services; all these are capped off by a call-to-action button that’s highlighted.
Additionally, know typical viewing patterns such as the Z and F patterns. Z-pattern designs are great for visually heavy pages with less copy, while F-pattern layouts work great for text-heavy websites, like blogs or news outlets.
CNN uses an F-pattern to layout their articles by placing featured stories at the top and then listing the rest in a vertical format below.
Grouping
The second important principle here is that of grouping. Grouping similar elements together makes it easy for a visitor to make out a pattern of the site.
For example, Adidas uses white space and contrasting text boxes to great effect in grouping elements on its checkout page, making it easy for users to follow. Finally, high-quality images are important.
Use a hero image on your home page to help build a strong first impression. Consider image sliders to show off products. Ensure your images are optimized for various screen sizes and devices, so they render properly.
Navigation
The third and last web design principle is navigation. A transparent and intuitive interface helps people get around your site. Begin with a simple menu that’s usually horizontal and goes across the top of the page.
Use a drop-down menu for an e-commerce store or sites that have over six pages, where you can minimize clutter but still help the user navigate, like how H&M has.
Create outstanding calls to action, too-or CTAs. Place your CTA-front and center-in a position it is most likely to be seen, whether it be a button or an anchor text. Use a contrasting color for it. Netflix has placed a red CTA button in the middle of its homepage so that the visitor’s eyes fall right on it.
Last but not least, pay attention to the footer. A thoughtfully designed footer can help improve navigation even further by providing additional information like a company overview, contact information, or social media links.
The Brainbox AI website has lots of white space and clear headings that make up an effective footer; it’s almost like a mini site map where visitors can navigate themselves to desired content in an instant.
There you have it-three web design principles you need to know in order to create an online, aesthetically pleasing experience.
Great, now that you know the theory, what do you say to starting your online designing project? If you have any questions, do let me know in the comments section below. Good luck with your online journey!
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