Web design is no longer a simple discipline with ready to do tasks. Web design involves a lot of complexities involving a variety of rules, techniques, design trends, approaches, concepts and terminologies. If you are not an experienced web designer having several successful projects up on your sleeve, you need to be cautious about remaining updated, future-ready, versatile and scalable with your design output. Good web design is capable of breath and leaves space for changes over time. The fundamentals of web design are all about keeping the design trendy while not missing the flexibility and scalability of design.
Here through the length of this post, we are going to explain the key web design rules that every web developer and designer should follow.
- Keeping The Design Consistent
The most important thing about web design is to accommodate all the design elements perfectly on the device screen. The device screen requires the setting of various configurable items in a manner to help traction and usability. This is why it is important for the design elements to remain consistent throughout the website layout. Keeping design elements consistent throughout the web design is crucial to maintaining the usability of the UI.
Let us explain the key requirements for maintaining consistency in design.
- You need to start by listing all the on-screen actions required by the website user.
- Now list out actions enacting similar functions.
- List out the actions under every single UI element.
- Now ensure aligning all the UI elements uniformly.
- Use consistent fonts and words for several actions.
- When you are using effects like hovering for any on-screen tool, it should be consistent.
When consistency is maintained for similar on-screen design elements, the users can easily engage and find the actionable elements they need. For example, when using form fields you can organise all of them just under a dropdown list to help clear navigation and access to firm fields.
- UtiliseThe Visual Hierarchy
The second most important thing about website design is about maintaining the visual hierarchy. The visual order of design elements and information helps users access the information and use the features effectively on the website pages. Question is, how the visual hierarchy can be maintained to help the users. Let us provide here some simple tips about using visual hierarchy in website design.
- To establish hierarchy, you can use different font sizes and colours. But while doing so always avoid making the design look too cumbersome and cluttered. Different sizes of the same font can be used for title, text and the header while maintaining perfect balance of color psycology with a few appropriate options from the colour palette that doesn’t create too many distractions.
- Visual hierarchy works best with the actionable screen elements like the Call to Action buttons. These buttons can be designed with brighter colours and two shades can be used when prioritising one over the other. Similarly, button sizes can be different as per visual hierarchy.
- Last but not the least of all advice concerning visual hierarchy is about pushing business conversion through on-screen interactions. Through all the on-screen interactions the website must push the users towards the selling point. So, the visual hierarchy should be incorporated to boost business conversion and sales.
- Navigation Options To Move Back And Forth
Navigation is the most crucial element in website design to allow easy accessibility and user engagement. The navigation should be designed to help users navigating back and forth easily. This actually helps to create pagination across the website. For users to be able to move back and forth is tremendously convenient.
Apart from this, the user should also be allowed to undo any action while making inputs or filling up a form. This will help them the difficulty of going through the entire course of actions all over again. Moreover, the design should also allow autofill function to help filling up forms easily where the user needs to provide the same information again and again. Providing suggestions based on user location and previous inputs while filling up a form is also very effective.
- Using White Or Negative Space
Let us be clear of one thing here. White space used in website design is not blank space. It is used to help design elements breath and boost visibility. A lot of white or negative space on the screen and fewer on-screen design elements also helps content visibility and focusing on one content at a time. This is also one crucial aspect to make your design look minimalist, clean and optimised for readability.
- Design For Multiple Devices With Above The Fold Visibility
Another important thing about website design is to ensure usability across multiple mobile devices. It should fit into any screen without any difficulty. For instance, a fully-fledged 3 column design looks appropriate for widescreen desktops by taking up the entire screen space and enhancing the readability. But the same design will not fit into a smaller 5-inch smartphone screen or at least the design output will not be as effective as the previous one.
Just to minimise the effects of device-specific differences on design, it is important to provide all crucial design and clickable elements above the fold on the top layer of the device screen. As most users hate to scroll down the page, providing most of the on-screen elements above the fold will help traction and engagement better.
- Address Legibility Problems
Last but not the least of all design considerations will be addressing legibility issues in design. If the on-screen contents cannot be read properly, your business message is not going to make an impact and issues concerning content legibility will make your website less useful.
Some of the concerning areas about optimum readability of contents are the poor colour choice for contents. Too light or too dark background or under-optimised contrast can undermine the content readability. When placing text over images, one needs to consider the optimum visibility and readability.
Apart from utilising the right contrast with background the content should also use the appropriate fonts to ensure optimum readability. It would be wise to avoid using any fancy fonts and use only font sizes perfect for average visibility standard. Sans-serif fonts used in large font sizes can ensure optimum readability.
Atman Rathod is working as the Business Director at CMARIX TechnoLabs, a leading web and mobile app development company with 13+ years of experience. He loves to write about technology, startups, entrepreneurship and business. His creative abilities, academic track record and leadership skills made him one of the key industry influencers as well.