Modern web designing has emerged as a new form of art. From ideas to deciding the website aesthetics & coding, everything about web designing requires intricacy and dexterity. Websites have surpassed their initial role of merely being informatory portals and become interactive and responsive over time.
It's a good thing if you look at it from the 'world is a global village' perspective, but the happening of so much activity on a single platform and the influx of so many businesses online makes one wonder whether there are any standards for well-kempt websites in modern times? Of course, there are!
Even among the present amount of clutter on the internet, a good website is easy to spot. HTML Pro has helped several websites make their mark by reflecting best practices across all of the following elements:
Domain Name
The domain name is a customer's first interaction with your brand identity. Make it memorable; make it speak for your brand. Consider the following when choosing a domain name for your website:
- Short and Easy to Type - a long or complicated domain name is hard to remember as well as stands a chance of spelling mistakes while being typed. A domain name that is short and simple is greatly preferred.
- Contains Your Keyword - using keywords in the domain name explains your brand better at the first glance and secondly, improves your search engine ranking.
- Memorable - you don't just need to name for your website, you need a witty phrase/word that your customers remember, or better still, share with their friends.
- Well Protected - protecting a domain name includes buying multiple versions of your domain name with minor changes or incorrect spellings. This keeps your competitors from buying domain names similar to yours and keeps traffic focused on you and your site alone.
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Bottom Line Up Front
'Bottom line up front is the name given to this trend where you mention your value proposition and company motto prior to other details. There's no point in forcing an uninterested visitor to explore your site. Instead, aim to attract more enthusiastic leads by being true and clear about what you do at the top of your website in 'bold, italic, and underline'!
Appearance
A customer may not interact with your company beyond your website experience, so make it worthwhile. Think of your website as virtual office space and make it just as visually appealing, comfortable, and inviting to visitors. Attracting customers in the first place may not be as difficult as retaining their attention and keeping them on site. This is where the following factors come into play:
- Color Composition - your website is not a pastry. Keep it simple with a blend of 2-3 primary colors and a professional yet pleasant mood. All of this should obviously reflect your business tone.
- Legible Text - text that cannot be easily read or understood is text wasted. There should be an appropriate contrast between your background and text color and the fonts that you use should be readable even from a distance. Instead of going for the typical Ariel and Times New Roman, try fonts that match your business tone.
- Meaningful Graphics - graphics shouldn't be pasted all over your website at random, rather their placement and the image itself should convey a purpose. You can attract as well as detract a customer only with the graphics you use. However, don't overload a page with graphics (3-4 images per page would do).
- High-Quality Images - a set of low-quality, pixilated, poorly saturated images would break the impression of your website. Retain quality in everything you do, especially in product photographs on the website.
- Simplicity - minimalism is back in fashion. Let there be white spaces, uncluttered layouts, minimal design and animations, and simple effects on your websites if you wish to keep customers focused on your products uninterruptedly.
Responsiveness
A responsive web design simply means a website that has been constructed so that all of the structure, images, and content of the website remain the same on any device or platform. For example, when a user accesses a website on their desktop, they are getting the full view of the website. But when that same user goes to visit the website from their tablet or smartphone, the website will retract to fit on the smaller screen.
Responsive websites respond to their environment and insist that design and development should respond to the user's environment and behavior based on screen size, orientation, and platform.
In other words, you do not have to worry about designing different websites for various platforms or making sure that your website runs properly on a mobile device.
Responsive web design is the emerging trend in modern website design as:
- Mobile usage is increasing
- Responsive design is recommended by Google
- Better user experience
- Easier to manage
- Can increase conversion rates
Content
- Precise and Organized - break your text into smaller sections of relevant material and clearly label each section with a truly reflecting heading. Your copywriting should be spot on in attention-grabbing and compelling visitors to read on.
- Regularly Updated - well-informed visitors are probably going to leave with a poor site impression if they are treated with outdated content. Speak to your visitors, actively!
- Error-free - misquoted facts and figures, incorrect grammar or spellings, incoherent content tone, all of these are serious downers for your website impression. Always double-check your content for such errors before publishing.
The appearance and content of your website should be flashy enough to invite customers to the website but also substantial. The 'interest quotient' of your site will fall if you overdo or underdo any of the above-mentioned elements.
Add more value to your website with the provision of useful articles visitors can take with them; downloadable podcasts, presentations, forms, etc.
However, don't spend all you got on the glitz and glamour of your website. Search engines have a thing to look for HTML content. Therefore it's equally essential that you invest in the following as well:
Functionality
Each component of the site should be properly functioning and performing the desired action. Broken or poorly constructed components, such as the hyperlinks, contact forms, event registration, site search, etc. are going to speak for your company's worth ethic. Make them flattering representatives.
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Usability
Usability is an umbrella term for all elements that make your website comfortable and convenient for a user. The most important of these elements are:
Good Site Speed - a page is unfit to retain visitors if it takes any longer than 20 seconds to load. That's still the upper limit of a page's load speed.
Minimal Scroll - people don't like to scroll all the way to the ends of the world, especially on the first page. Create links that lead the visitors from the main page to other subjects of the website, but don't overload the home page. It helps with SEO as well.
Logical Navigation - make use of a hamburger menu to keep the different links on the site in one place and easy to navigate. Do not let the menu items exceed 10.
Descriptive Link Text - link text is like a summarizing view of your website for users as well as search engines. Long, descriptive link texts are favored by both of the formerly mentioned. Adding backlinks, site maps, or breadcrumbs further makes a new visitor feel at home and familiarized with the website.
Cross-Platform/Browser Compatibility - your website should be compatible and compliant with the rules of, at least, the latest versions of Internet Explorer (8 and 9), Mozilla Firefox, and Safari. Other browsers will have their own set of rules for displaying a website.
After you have catered to all the internal needs of a website, you must see if it's within the approach of potential customers. For that purpose, you must get your website:
Search Engine Optimized
SEO is an inexhaustible list of do's and don'ts, of which we will tell you only the following for starters:
- Have detailed, plentifully written HTML formatted content. Don't use JavaScript, Flash, or image-only objects for navigational items.
- Maximize the use of your keywords at appropriate places in your copywriting
- Use Cascading Style Sheets for layout and positioning, and keep your HTML code clean of unnecessary information.
- Make your links detailed with descriptions and filled with your keywords.
This article is by no means entirely comprehensive about what makes a website remarkable but it has touched on all the impressive elements necessary for a modern website designing.
