Overview
Great websites do not happen by accident, you have to consider web design best practices. A site is considered successful if it is useful, relevant, and well designed.
While different web projects each have different needs, there are some design principles and best practices that are universal to all sites. In this article, we will take a look at 5 Design Tips to Revive Your Dead Website and some other great tips on redesign and what to avoid when designing a website.
1. Think About Conversions
Design goes beyond just the aesthetics. Yes, you want a website to be visually attractive, but you must also bear in mind that a website is not a work of fine art. Customers do not come to a site to admire the visual appearance. They are there for some actionable reason - to find certain information or to accomplish a particular task.
A successful website is one that understands the needs; thus, its design should lead people to do exactly what they are there to do.
2. Don’t Be Afraid of White Space
Another important property of a great website design is the effective use of white space. To non-designers, white space seems like the areas of the site where design has not been applied. For an expert web designer, however, each part of the space that they use around the images, written content, call-to-action buttons, and every other element of the site is deliberately designed.
Too often, companies think of their homepage as if it was a newspaper. They strive to fill every available pixel with one kind of content after another, the same way someone laying out a newspaper would fill every inch with columns of copy. This aggressive use of space makes sense in terms of newspaper printing, but websites are not newspapers and people do not consume website content the same way they consume the printed page.
For website visitors, adequate spacing between elements on a page allows for a more enjoyable reading experience (more on that reading experience shortly). It also allows them time to focus on the individual pieces of a page without being overwhelmed by everything else around it. White space gives content time to shine without fighting for attention against all of its neighbors!
3. Typography
While awesome videos and stunning photographs may get much of the glory online, the reality is that the Web is predominantly text content. If there is one area of your website where some extra design attention can go a long way, it is with that site’s typography.
For years, websites were limited to only being able to use a handful of “web safe fonts,” such as:
Arial
Verdana
Times New Roman
Georgia
Tahoma
Lucida
These were fonts that were essentially guaranteed to be installed on your computer (since this is where a website reads its fonts from). In recent years, however, font selection for websites has taken a significant leap forward with the introduction of @font-face (pronounced “at font face”).
With this method, font files can be included along with other resources, like images, that a website needs to use to display properly. Instead of getting fonts from a user’s computer, a website can instead use these included font files allowing that site access to a staggering array of font choices used in that design!
4. Add Less, Not More
When designing websites, there is always the temptation to add “more stuff”. Clients request additional features to be added, they want more buttons squeezed into the navigation, or they make some other request to pile more into their new website.
Adding elements or content that is necessary for success is fine, but anyone who has even had these conversations can attest to the fact that everything being added is certainly not necessary. Too often, these additions add clutter to design instead of clarity. Therefore, instead of contemplating what else you can add to your site, look at what you already have and determine what can be removed.
5. Have Fun but Don’t Go Overboard
One of the goals you most likely have for your site and for your online presence is that you want to make a impression on your visitors. You want them to remember your business. One of the best ways to achieve this is by adding some “fun” to the experience. After all, a fun experience is one that people enjoy - and if people have an enjoyable experience, that is also often a memorable experience.