The Dos of effective web design

When you are creating a website, there are specific items you need to be aware of for the website's design to be effective, assist users to navigate easily and convert prospects into leads. Yes, web design plays a large part in achieving a business' online objectives. First impressions count and a business' website design has as little as 50 milliseconds to capture the interest of potential customers.

Below are a list of do’s we have put together about effective web design. We'd like to hear of anything else you feel is important, in the comments below. We love getting your opinions on things and discussing the articles with you.

DO: Keep the page structured

Good web design has a consistent structure and layout help present information in an easy to follow format.

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DO: Focus on what’s important

What are you building a website for? Whatever it is, make sure that’s the focus of the home page. Allow yourself space on the inner pages to place calls to action for that specific objective.

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DO: Choose the right colour scheme

Knowing what your readers emotions are will help you in choosing the proper color scheme. Results from studies indicate that people's favourite colour tends to be blue (42%), followed by green (14%), purple (14%) and black (7%).

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DO: Make it easy for users to scan your pages

Your website's users won't spend ages trying to figure out what your website is about and what it has to offer. The best way to ensure you’re getting the right information out to your users is to make the page information easy to scan. Use headings to focus on the important items, and pull quotes, block quotes and images to further break up information.

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DO: Keep it simple

It’s a proven fact that sign up forms with more than 3 items (usually – name, email and one other item) will have a significantly lower sign up rate than the easier forms, so don’t over complicate things. Make things as easy as possible for your readers to contribute.

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DO: Set up your navigation properly

Make your navigation is easy to spot, easy to use and easy to understand. Titles of each navigation item must be able to be understood by your website's users. Main navigation must be place in an accessible and identifiable place on your website.

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DO: Optimise your load times

Online users are impatient. Therefore your website must allow users to access your page in around 1-2 seconds.

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DO: Make your page visually appealing

"Don’t judge a book by its cover" does not apply to how people perceive websites. The first thing users see is the web design, and they associate it with your brand or business. So that first impression better be a good one. Utilise textures/gradients that give your website depth and draw attention to the beauty of your design.

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Image/s source:webdesignledger.com

Below is a comment box. We would love to hear of more techniques of effective web design!

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