Web Design Tips for Improving Your Blog
Want to ensure that visitors will exit your website almost immediately after landing there? Be sure to make it difficult for them to find what it is they are looking for. Follow these 10 Web Design Tips.
10 Most Popular Web Design Tips on Blogger
* Have a polished, Your logo is an important part of your brand, so make sure it's located prominently on your site, says Tiffany Monhollon, senior content marketing manager at online marketer ReachLocal.
* Use intuitive navigation. Primary navigation options are typically deployed in a horizontal bar along the top of the site, says Brian Gatti, a partner with Inspire Business Concepts, a digital marketing company. Provide "secondary navigation options underneath the primary navigation bar, or in the margin of the site, known as the sidebar. Confusing navigation layouts will result in people quitting a page rather than trying to figure it out, Gatti says. So instead of putting links to less important pages that detract from your call to action or primary information the top of your home or landing pages, put less important links or pieces of information at the bottom of a page in the footer.
* It's very easy these days to be visually overloaded with images, to the point where our brains stop processing information when confronted with too many options, explains Paolo Vidali, senior digital marketing strategist, DragonSearch, a digital marketing agency. To keep visitors on your site, make sure pages do not have competing calls to action or visual clutter, lots of graphics, photographs or animated that would draw the visitor's eyes away from the most important part of the page.
* Give visitors breathing room. Create enough space between your paragraphs and images so the viewer has space to breathe and is more able to absorb all of the features your site and business have to offer, says Hannah Spencer, graphic designer, Coalition Technologies, a Web design and online marketing agency. Controlling white space through layout will keep users focused on the content and control user flow, With a lot of visual competition taking place on the Web and on mobile, less is more. Controlling white space will improve user experience, increasing returns from the website.
* Using a mostly neutral color palette can help your site project an elegant, clean and modern appearance, says Mark Hoben, the head of Web design at Egencia, the business travel division of the Expedia group, who is also a believer in using color wisely. It is also important to use a color palette that complements your logo and is consistent with your other marketing materials.
* Website visitors can sniff out generic photos in a second--and they all be left with a generic impression of your company, warns Zane Schwarzlose, community relations director, Fahrenheit Marketing. We strongly recommend that our clients invest in professional photography or purchase professional stock photos, says Gatti. Good photographs "draw the eye, providing an emotional connection to the written content. If you want to draw attention to a particular piece of content or a signup button, include a photo of a person looking at the content, We are immediately drawn to faces of other humans and when we see that face looking' at something, our eyes are instinctively drawn there as well.
* Choose fonts that are easy to read across devices and browsers. When choosing fonts, keep in mind that people will be looking at your website not just on a laptop but on mobile devices. "Some large-scaled fonts may read well on but not scale or render well on mobile, losing the desired look and feel, So he advises using a universal font. Pick a typeface that can be easily read and size it no less than 11pt, If you're using Web fonts, try to use no more than two font families in order to ensure fast load times.
* Most websites have a design that assumes a user enters through the home page and navigates into the site, The reality, though, is that the majority of visits for most sites begin on a page that is not the home page," he says. Therefore, you need to design the site in such a way that whatever page a visitor lands on, key information is there.
* When asked for their top design tips, almost all the Web designers CIO.com queried immediately said: Put your call to action in the upper portion of your website, along with your phone number and/or email address. I recommend going against full-width sliders and encourage sliders or set images that cover two-thirds of the width allowing for a contact form to be above the fold," says Aaron Watters, director, Leadhub, a website design and SEO company.
* Rather than developing a site for each device, a responsive site is designed to adapt to the browser size, making for a better user experience, says Jayme Pretzloff, online marketing director, Wixon Jewelers. And a better user experience typically translates into more time spent on your site and higher conversion rates.
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