In managing and running a website, the key is to ensure that your site can gain a whole lot of visitors. Generally, when one creates a website, traffic is the priority goal. Many ask: what’s the best way to increase website traffic?
Those who are familiar with digital marketing and search engine optimization know that the answer is website design. When design elements are poor, even excellent content cannot attract the target number of visitors to your site.
Actually, there is no single best design that applies to all types of businesses. There is no one-type-fits-all template for that.
However, the best web designs use universal design elements that apply to all kinds of businesses, whether in plumbing website design or designing a website to sell alpaca wraps from Peru. Universal web design elements include failproof ways to improve the overall ranking of your business website.
If you’re looking to change your website design, no worries. This article summarizes five (5) of the best web design ideas that apply to every type of business.
Use Some Contrast
When you use some contrasting elements in your web design, you do so to make the essential features stand out on the page. Design is not effective when everything looks the same. In fact, it may even result in a cluttered look. Here are some of the best ways to boost the effect of using contrast in your web design.
- Make some points bigger (or smaller). This is part of the process of creating symmetry in your web design, where you are creating one strong focal point on each web page.
Without this symmetry, your page will have many elements of equal weight that can only confuse your page viewers. When you select parts of your web design to be bigger or smaller, that which is different becomes the immediate focal point that sends a message.
- Play with colors. This is one of the most commonly applied means of creating contrast on a website.
You can start by using black against white and vice versa.
- You can also use dark and light elements, thick and thin lines, round versus angled shapes, and text versus images.
- Add a little texture. There are many design opportunities where a bit of texture can be used to great effect.
For instance, you can spruce up what would otherwise be an ordinary and flat website into a three-dimensional one to create an area of focus. Here, you can also add some textured highlights to some of the text elements on your site.
- Use blank spaces. This is when white space is used to surrounding particular design elements to draw attention to these elements or make them stand out.
Use A Clear Visual Hierarchy
In the practice of website design, visual hierarchy refers to the contrast, arrangement, and the size of your visual elements. Here, the visual prominence of each element is deliberate so that the order signals the human eye where to go first.
Web designers take cues from visual hierarchy to effectively drive attention to the most important elements of the web page.
Here’s how you can use elements of visual hierarchy for best design practice.
- Contrast – Use contrasts that create a focus on color and white space.
- Position – Use high or low positions to send a message about importance.
- Visuals – Use a choice of icons, videos, images, and text fonts.
- Sizes – Use big or small photos and other visual elements for deliberate effects.
Use Effective Repetition
Another critical aspect of website design has to do with repeated elements.
This is important to establish good visitor experience, unite the design elements and contents, and create a sense of organization. When practising repetition in web design, it is safe to apply it in the following areas:
- Spatial relationship
- Sizes
- Graphic concepts
- Fonts
- Line thicknesses
Whether your website is simple or complex, some aspects must be repeated consistently to create an effective website design. Repetition is one of the best ways to bring about cohesiveness as well as to come up with an integrated and consistent design.
By using effective repetition in your page design, you can help and increase your website traffic by creating impressions that are positive as well as long-lasting.
Use Unique Headlines
The headlines that you use for your website content also fall under web design. In fact, headlines are one of the very first things that your website visitors see, second only to visuals. When headlines are not effective, most page visitors won’t even read the text.
An effective way to ensure that your headlines are effective is to use descriptive text. Here are some of the best tips for creating striking headlines:
- Use emotive adjectives to describe problems that your products or services can fix.
- When stating a claim, provide substantial, verifiable, and credible evidence.
- Keep headlines concise and informative.
- Check that all headlines are relevant to the content of the text.
Prioritize Loading Speed
Another element of website design that applies to all types of businesses is loading speed. Most page visitors become impatient after waiting beyond three (3) seconds for a page to load. Beyond that, it does not matter if your page is excellent, useful, or stunning.
Visitors won’t even see it; they’re already clicking to another website. In addition, search engines also examine the page loading speed of every website and rank the page accordingly.
Slow loading is caused by websites that are too loaded with graphics or extremely long content. Here are some of the best ways to boost your page loading speed:
- Run a page or website speed diagnostic test regularly.
- Always use browser caching options.
- Remove all plugins except those that are absolutely necessary.
- Compress your images.
- Remove all render-blocking Javascript.
- Whenever possible, minify all CSS, Javascript, and HTML elements.
- Use a good content distribution system or network.
Takeaways
There is no single website design template that works for all businesses. However, the universal webpage design elements summarized in this article are some of the best ways to effective web design that increase incoming traffic, regardless of the type of business you have.
Start with these and see the positive changes in your website’s overall rankings.
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