“To become successful online, you only need to remember the following: Good Heart + Passion + Web Design + SEO + Digital Marketing + Dedication + Positiveness + Patience = Success” - Dr. Christopher Dayagdag
If you’re served with two plates of egg dishes- Cheesy Egg Benedict and salted scrambled eggs- which one you’re likely to pick? The fancy, delicately designed and heartily presented platter, no matter how its content would taste. In the same way, websites have been in today’s time. People like to plug into the sites which are highly creative, optimized and distinguishable than the rest of the ‘www’ clutter.
Do You Know?
Check out these facts from GoodFirms Web Design Research:
- 88.5% of visitors bounce out of a website if it is slow loading.
- 61.5% of research participants believe that a website needs a redesign if it does not offer good UX.
- 73.1% of users expect a site to be mobile-responsive.
Point Of View: Survival Of Great Web Designers
Looking at the facts, one could confine their belief in website design services. In a pool of talented to the unaware bunch of experts, if you’ve to turn out to be an exception, there’s a price to pay. Wondering how much and how? Well, the currency is disguised as better technology exposure, expansive portfolio, cross-industry experience and client-oriented approach.
It’s easy said than done which is the reason why most of the best minds are stuck in ‘What to do?’ and ‘How to do?’ Presenting you a curated list of challenges that every designer faces during their career while creating a website that is:
- User-Friendly & Accessible
- Responsive
- Quick to Load
- Improved Version of UX
- Visually Pleasing
- All-Browser Compatible
- Not Over-Saturated
- Secure
- Engaging
# User-Friendly & Accessible
“Getting lost in your website” might not always be a sign to cherish. A good website must remain easily navigable but if your audience seems to get confused after a few clicks, then it could possibly be because of a clumsy sitemap and interlinks leading to a high bounce rate.
Here are the pointers to avert this scenario:
- Optimize Navigation Panel: Don’t miss out any primary web pages from the panel but if you've got a larger sitemap then you must create a utility navigation panel. Also, the placement of the navigation bar is suggested to be at the top or left side of the screen. Do remember to keep the navigation panel on screen even while scrolling down.
- Logo: Being the face of your company, keep the logo on left side of the website which grabs the maximum attention of the user. Do add a default homepage link on it.
- Search Bar: E-commerce or not, a search bar is an unavoidable functionality on your website that helps its users to land on the page (product/service) they’re specifically looking for.
- Contact Information: Be available. Don’t make your customers wait or put efforts to contact you. Give away your contact information on the footer of every webpage.
# Responsive Site
According to reports, 51.77%of online traffic comes from mobile devices. Desktop websites are essential without a thought but device-customized websites are getting avid mobile users nowadays. You don’t want to turn-off your audience with a lame mobile experience. App development is hence trending but web presence couldn’t be ignored. For making yourself available for everyone, give attention to three elements of a responsive site:
- Fluid Grid: Unlike past when the websites were designed as per the fixed pixels, fixed percentages have taken the lead these days which allow the users to visit websites on any of their devices.
- Adaptive Images & Text: Image and font size can’t be kept same for all devices hence, we need to tweak up the code. Here’s an example of CSS;
.picture img { width: 100%; height: auto; }
- Media Queries: Once you’ve successfully implemented codes for above two, it’s time to get them assembled. So, media query tells what to specifically display on mobile, tablet or desktop.
# Quick Loading Speed
It’s a few seconds game for your prospect to pass you off or stick with you as your customer. Don’t make them wait more than 2 seconds for loading a webpage. Thinking how can you run a website faster?
- Compressed and Light Website: Images & videos are great to please but ‘too much’ and ‘unnecessary’ media has to go away. Apart from this, compress your website images using software like Smush.it, RIOT, etc.
- Split Pages: Muddling up all the information at one page might not be the best idea indeed. Give your website multiple short pages for faster loading and better SEO juices to follow.
- Clean Coding: Website crawlers are simple bots that understand simple language. Confusing them with complex and distorted coding will only force them to take more reading time.
# Great User Experience
Users are quite naive when they enter your world. It’s your duty to handle their confusion and lead them through a decision (in your favor). Isn’t that what you’ve been wanting ever since? Here’s how you do it:
- Make your clients feel welcomed with an interactive home-page
- Lead them to conversion page through convincing ‘Call To Action’ button
- Have strong content management & structure to clarify business goals and services
- Keep it accessible for all devices & browsers
- Be easy to navigate and available to contact
# Visual Content
The fashion and design trends have a reputation to change as per season and taste. Designers can’t stick to one golden rule. However, you must have a basic understanding of graphics to make fair decisions.
- Give attention to the color psychology of website and its content
- Get accustomed to typography trends
- Pay attention to white spaces
- Impress using rich animation and pictures
- Keep your texts minimal by being to-the-point and saying it in-the-pointers
# Compatible With All Browsers
With 58.09% of Google Chrome users, you can’t leave the rest of netizens unwelcomed to your site. It’s not just important to keep it code optimized to fit the need of different devices but browsers as well.
- Don’t overdo & over-stuff the pages. It’s good to have flexible media but not at the cost of compatibility issues.
- Use Validator to avoid coding errors
- Utilize CSS reset rules to fit all browsers needs
- Be conscious while using Images, Flash Animation and JavaScript because not all browsers support JavaScript and Flash software.
# Don’t Over-Saturate Web Application
Using available scripts and ideas onto your site might give you a stable user experience and your customers don’t have to put efforts to understand the functionality of your site, but this is going to hurt you more than healing. How? Thinking you’re stale and common like others, your audience won’t explore you. For once, website layout may not fetch newness but creative designs will change the impression. What else to do?
- Invent solutions wherever possible like a personalized scroll bar, search bar, menu, etc.
- Convert your menu bar to simple, clear and clean
- Avoid stuffing and go minimal
- Don’t place media icons at primary positions as you don’t want to drive away traffic from your website
# Security
Web designers struggle a lot when it comes to the security of websites. No matter what platform you’re planning to use for your website but there’s an ample amount of risk surrounding you. From malware floating in the stream, here are some of the amazing plugins and methods for best security:
- For Wordpress Security Plugins: iThemes Security, Block Bad Queries, WordFence, VaultPress, Bulletproof Securities and more
- Enable ‘SSL’ button on Weebly site
- Make your website FTPS
- Go with HTTPS for secure and encrypted browser-server transfers
- Keep your password & username foul-proof
# Improve Engaging Factor
The ultimate goal of all the sweat and blood in making a website comes down to improving engagement level of the site. Customers must stay, browse, engage and convert. There are myriads of interacting ideas to implement and scope to invent more but here are the basics to start with:
- Connected and well-planned interlinking structure for smooth follow of clicks
- Optimize ‘Related Posts’ section with relevant links
- Collect client information (email, phone number) by using query forms, quizzes, offers, newsletters, etc.
- Use social media to drive traffic by running online campaigns like contests, giveaways, etc.
Calling For Conclusion:
There are 1.8 billion websites on world wide web. Even though half of it isn’t active but the competition is still similar to ‘infinite minus infinite’. You’ve to pose like a star. Brainstorm about essential elements that’ll make you stand apart from others. If investing in top web design companies frightens you, then re-think, re-plan and decide, isn’t it worth to have effortless traffic to your website that calls for conversion?
