Best Web Design Practices To Follow

Talking of web design ,there are some of the practices which are advisable in order to help you  come up with a good design.

• Keep the Design Simple,

Fresh and Unique - Your website reflects your brand. It is the first impression a visitor will form when they visit your site for the first time. If you use an off-the-shelf template and your website looks like thousands of other sites on the Internet, you’ll miss an opportunity to create a unique impression. Why would a potential customer remember your site when s/he has seen dozens of other sites that look just like your site. As you consider your site design, be sure you have a professional logo design. A logo created from clip-art or a template won’t be unique and will create a poor impression. Even worse, it may expose you to substantial legal risk. Some business owners invest in a new website design but forget to create an original logo (or to update their old clip-art based logo).

• Showcase your products and services - Don’t overload your site with photos or graphics. Although it’s been said that a picture can say a thousand words, pictures can also confuse and diffuse attention. Pick a few good product shots and/or services and feature those products on the homepage. You can feature your other products on interior pages.

• Pay Attention To Site Load Times - People are impatient when browsing websites and slow load times impact conversions (getting people to buy your products or services). If your site design is graphically intense, you need to make sure you’ll have the hardware infrastructure and bandwidth to support the designs. This is especially critical if you’re serving a large customer base and expect substantial traffic to your site.

• Make your site easily accessible - Keep the web design and navigation consistent throughout the site. Don’t create unrelated designs for different pages on your site. All the pages should have a similar overall layout and design. Also consider how people with slower internet connections will view your site.

• Organize your site to provide a better user experience - Search engines prefer websites that are properly organized. People also prefer good organization. Keep in mind that when your prospective customers visit your site, they’re typically looking for specific information. They’re rarely going to read entire pages – they’ll skim headlines and small portions of text and look at photos or graphics (but not all of them on the same page). A properly structured site that presents information in an orderly and organized way will be much more successful than one that appears chaotic.

• Content is important - Keep the content fresh and current. If your website has content dated from 2013, your visitors may quickly leave your site. Poor content can quickly cause a visitor to leave your site. Don’t ignore headlines – they can be very powerful and can mean the difference between a visitor reading the rest of the content and leaving your site. Study your successful competitors – especially those that have been in business longer than you. Look at their websites and study how they present their products and services to their customers and potential customers. Study their site colors, voice, use of graphics, illustrations and photos, and the overall site organization.

• Domain Name - Your domain will communicate important information to your visitors. It might tell them what your business does. Or it might simply be an effective way for people to easily reach your site. If you’re unable to find a URL that matches your business name, you can consider changing the name or finding an alternative URL that includes the name – or one that complements the name.

• Use a responsive design - The user experience should correlate with whatever screen size, platform or orientation your site visitor is using. Important things to keep in mind here are a mix of flexible grids, layouts, images and intelligent use of CSS media queries.