The 10 Elements That Make Up a Great Website Design
Article by J.C. Yee
Graphics Design by Ryan Rivera
If you’re looking for a helpful guide on how to achieve the best web design for your company’s website, then you’ve landed at the right place. In this article, we discuss in detail the top ten elements that make up great website design and the points that can help you attain them.
1. Customized Layout
In the sea of websites in the digital world, it’s never advisable for any company to create a website from a template, which can harm their business’ online presence. A custom web design or User Interface (UI) is always the way to go since it is tailored towards a company’s branding elements, allowing any website owner to personalize the site experience from scratch.
A web designer can achieve professional and customized website layouts by having a careful study of the client’s business. Think of it like a tailored suit; compared to standard outfits from a department store, a custom layout can easily highlight the best features of a website according to what the client wants.
With a competent web designer, you can easily come up with any kind of engaging content you want and they will figure out a way to make it shine on the website.
2. Quality Visuals
Humans are naturally visual learners. In this age of information overload on the web, people’s attention span can only be dedicated to places where browsing through is not an eyesore. A website that properly uses high-quality visuals like photos and infographics does its part in helping people understand a message more effectively. The most reputable web design agencies fuel their creativity with effective assets from stock banks such as Shutterstock, iStock, and more. They have access to millions of photos and vector illustrations that will allow them to deliver the best results efficiently.
As a trusted web design and development agency in Manila, Gotafflair prides itself on providing web packages that allow clients to choose photos from the most powerful stock banks in the world. In fact, they give their clients exclusive ownership of the chosen photos so that they can use it anytime they want.
3. Captivating Banner Area
The banner is the biggest and most prominent area on your website’s home page. It generates the most number of impressions since it’s considered as the face of your website. As such, it’s highly critical for any brand to invest in a captivating website banner to capture visitors’ attention and interest.
Sure, a lot of website banners look simple at first glance, but a closer look would lead anyone to realize that the secret to an engaging banner lies in the perfect combination of taglines and images. Whereas most corporate websites have navigation effect for the display of multiple banners, some businesses invest in playful animations if they feel like it will enhance the browsing experience of their target audience.
Related: Secrets to Creating Effective Website Taglines by Verz Design
4. Compelling Contents
Whereas design is the element that attracts visitors, compelling contents are what makes them stay. In the words of Jeffrey Zeldman, design without content is just decoration.
There is a myriad of ways on how you can produce compelling content for your website. However, if you’re just starting to build a website for your business, then writing website copy that conveys your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) to users is one of the best ways to go.
Revolving your site’s content with your USP will allow you to come up with original and engaging content which shows professionalism and the credibility of your company. If you’re just plagiarizing content from other websites, you should know that search engines can identify duplicated content on the web. Worse, you may be charged with a copyright lawsuit.
As such, it is highly recommended for companies to tap a professional web copywriter who will handle everything that concerns your site’s content. Given businesses’ tendency to copy-paste existing content from their brochures, flyers, and other print marketing collaterals, a copywriter can also copyedit these to make it suitable for web-viewing.
5. Fast Loading Speed
Did you know that websites only have a maximum of 8 seconds to convince a visitor to stay? If a page loads more than that, chances are the user will immediately leave your website. Having a fast website not only helps users to swiftly navigate across pages, but it also helps your website to rank well on search engine results.
In having the ideal site speed, website owners must invest in optimized web design and a reliable hosting provider. This means that while the code and images of your website must be optimized across all platforms, your site must also be under a hosting plan that offers the most suitable specification for your needs.
Hosting terms can be a little tricky for businesses that are new to engaging professional web design services, which is why Gotafflair provides end-to-end web development solutions that take this hassle off from clients.
Read this article to know how you can improve your website’s page speed.
6. Responsive Web Design
Responsive web design is an approach that professional web designers use in building websites that adapts accordingly to the size of various devices such as mobile, desktop, or tablet.
Since consumer trends are already pointing to the heightened use of mobile devices, businesses that want to have a great website must not only design it according to how they want to be seen on computers but also on mobile devices. Implementing a responsive web design ultimately allows your business to give out exceptional user experience since you put into consideration people’s behavior when they are on the go.
In addition, making a mobile-friendly website results in a myriad of benefits that can help any company to succeed in the digital world. We talk at length about these results in our very own article about why businesses need responsive web design.
7. Customized Thank You Page
A Thank You Page is a utility page that shows up instantly after a user sends an inquiry or submits an order, acknowledging the conversion they just made.
Similar to how we say “thank you” and “good-bye” after an interaction, having a Thank You Page on your website will serve as the cherry-on-top as it allows you to make a final, lasting impression.
It’s highly important to never take a Thank You Page for granted since you can also customize it according to your conversion goal. Whether you want to promote your newsletter, products, or even an event, this page can always come in handy. Just ensure that you won’t crowd it with too much information.
8. Coherent Navigation
Krug’s first law of usability states that any product, or interface for that matter, must be obvious and self-explanatory. When creating a great website, designers must think about the manner users will navigate. It should be familiar and intuitive; otherwise, they will feel like you’re wasting their time.
One hallmark of a carefully considered navigation is by having a sitemap that structures every page of a website logically. Since the sitemap serves as the website’s overall skeleton of your website, it’s role is to primarily determine how pages are formed altogether. The sitemap will then serve as a guide to define which pages are essential to be on the site’s homepage, menu bar, and footer.
With proper design strategy, a website with a logical navigation flow will increase its traffic as it creates a good browsing experience for the user.
9. Awesome User Experience
Speaking of a good browsing experience, one can easily say that a website is good if it provides exceptional User Experience (UX).
In the web design industry, user experience simply refers to what users feel when they are navigating through an interface. It concerns the strategy of how websites present information to deliver the ideal experience between a product and a customer.
User Experience can be treated as the sum of all points mentioned above, emphasizing the aspect that a website must be user-friendly from top to bottom. In order to achieve this, a web designer must have a deep understanding of how a typical user would use a website and design it from their perspective.
Pair exceptional UX with a captivating UI, and what a website will have is a growing number of consumer engagement.
This article discusses in detail the underlying importance and functions of UI and UX Design.
10. Search Engine Friendly
After almost everything on your website has been put into fruition, the one thing left for it to be considered great website is its search engine friendliness. Sure, your site provides valuable content and experience, but if users can’t find it when they look for you on Google, then all your efforts would be wasted.
There are two ways to make your site appear on search engine results (or better yet, on top of them). First is by Search Engine Optimization (SEO) where you grow website visibility through non-paid means or by Search Engine Marketing (SEM), where you essentially pay Google to list your site on the first page.
Approaches in SEO campaigns include consistent blog posting, optimizing page content, images, site speed, getting links from external websites, among others. It’s easy to recommend this practice for smaller businesses since SEM can be a bit pricey.
However, take note that using both at the same time is a faster way to drive traffic to your website since your paid ads can help you get quick results while you wait for the results of your SEO campaigns to kick in.
Since websites act as your 24/7 salesperson, it’s important to groom it to an effective one by sticking to these essential elements. As a web design and development expert ourselves, Gotafflair prides itself on having built our business from these attributes, making websites stay in the hearts and minds of people.
Want to build or revamp your professional website? Let’s talk details! Contact us at 798 8195 or email us at sales@gotafflair.com for a free consultation!
