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Seven Steps To Achieve Perfect Web Design
It’s what every company dreams of. Aspires to. The perfect website. Over the years we’ve seen plenty of sites crammed full of information, making sure the visitor has every key point in front of them.
Today however is the age of simplicity. As is tomorrow and the foreseeable future. In all walks of life a simple design is conquering all. Whether that be the face of a watch, the shape of a car, or the display of an iPhone, a clean, straightforward look has never been more integral in selling a product.
Which of course, means selling your business online too.
There are a number of steps a brand can take to bring their website into the 21st century and the age of the next generation, and in many cases it doesn’t take an awful lot of work…
Put Your Thoughts On Paper
Sometimes it’s as simple as getting a pen and a piece of paper. It seems extremely obvious to map out your site on paper first, or sketch down exactly what you want, but you’d be surprised by how many designers head straight into playing around on Photoshop before thinking about functionality and layout.
A clearly thought out sketch will allow designers to always have a reference, something which they can stick to.
Focus Only On Essentials
The days of a cluttered homepage are thankfully well and truly behind us. You only need to look at the likes of Apple, and The Bank of New York Mellon to see that. Despite being entirely different brands, each site has a great deal in common – they sell the most important parts of a business.
Take http://www.onlineroulettefree.co.uk/ for example, a major selling point of their brand are their bonuses, so above the fold lies that information with strong visuals to back this up rather than a sea of information.
More Content Above The Fold
And more content above the fold is essential. Alongside Apple and the Bank of New York Mellon do this extremely well. Apple are of course well known for their simplistic design, whilst despite the world of banking and investment being complicated to us mere mortals, their simple content encouraging click-throughs tells us exactly what they do and where to go should we need more.
Limit Colour Scheme
The internet is no stranger to a splash of colour, some sites look as hectic as a Jackson Pollock, but subtle shades are becoming a much better option for brands when designing a site.
Sticking to your brand colours is obviously important; after all you won’t see the McDonald’s website covered in blue, but being subtle with it is integral.
Using two or three colours, perhaps even the same shade, won’t divert any attention away from the important messages, whilst also your brand will be represented more rather than a spluttering of a thousand different colours.
Pay Attention To Details
And it’s paying to those sorts of details which will set your site apart from competitors. There’s nothing a site could do more than pay attention to every nook and cranny. It suggests they take care in every single thing they do, right down to perhaps a small gradient in a button.
Be Search Engine Friendly
In the content side of your site, you must think about what will be friendly to search engines. Before you enter any information into your site you should identify around 10 or 12 keywords that a user may use to find your site on search engines.
Incorporating those into your content will optimise your site and make it much more visible to potential customers.
Encourage The Share
More important than ever before is the encouragement to share. Social media is as powerful as can be and not only encouraging users to interact with your social pages, but encourage content, and even products to be shared on Facebook and Twitter.
Take a look at Topshop for example, not only is their layout simple and stylish, underneath the product is a host of different platforms to share that product. It’s the same outside of retail too. Our previous example of the Bank of New York Mellon do the same with share buttons to content that has been written, potentially giving your brand a much wider audience.
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