Chico Web Design has been crafting websites for over 7 years and has experience developing countless websites and online software solutions for businesses both locally and around the country. Last week, during our weekly CWD meeting, we were discussing some of the attributes us as designers thought made for a quality online user experience based on our knowledge of the industry.
7 Fundamental Aspects of Great Website Design
1.Professional Appearance
When designing a website for a client we often ask some basic questions such as; what is the target demographic? What will your clients or customers be looking for? Knowing your audience or target demographic is key to help building a professional look and feel for your website. If your target demographic is other businesses (B2B), then perhaps you may not want to build a website with florescent text and technicolor blinking backgrounds. Potential clients will leave your website even if you have great content. A theme for your website should be kept consistent so every page looks alike and is easily readable. There are a lot of websites that are difficult to read due to font choice, size or color. Make sure that there is enough contrast between the color of the text and the background because we don’t want users straining their eyes to read the content on the page. You have three seconds to capture their attention. You better act fast!
2.Clear, Concise, and Consistent Navigation
If users cannot figure out how to navigate your website quickly, they will most likely exit your website. Throughout your website it is ideal to keep your navigation structure consistent. When designing navigation for your website make sure that your links stand out and do not look similar the rest of the text on the page. There should be a navigation link to go to the homepage on every page of your website. A common practice is to make the main logo a link to the homepage. The desired content should never be more then “2 clicks” away.
3.Professional Photography
“A picture can speak a thousand words.” This is a very old but true statement. Not all users enjoy reading. In today’s world, everybody wants everything right now. And there’s no better way to illustrate what a piece of content is about than a visually striking image. Making your website visually stimulating is the goal. When adding an image to your website make sure to give it a file name related to the image. Search engines like Google and Yahoo cannot read images but can read titles, file names, and alternate descriptions. Image alternate descriptions lets the Search Engine fully understand your image by adding alternate attributes to your images. These alternate attributes should include keywords describing your image. Reducing the images file size is very important because people who have slow Internet connections or people using PDA’s will lose interest if the page takes too long to load. You want to give users a fast load time by having the highest quality image and the lowest possible file size.
4.Load Time/ Page Speed
Responsive and fast loading websites make users feel empowered and in-control. You can get faster load times by properly sizing images, audio, and video. If not resized properly they can drastically reduce your page load speed. “Who wants to sit around for 10 seconds and wait for a page to load?”…Not us! The benefit of a fast loading time, from a search engines point of view, is that faster loading pages provide a better browsing experience for the user, which translates into the kind of quality links that they strive to deliver. Recent statements from Yahoo and Google about slow load times is that it may effect your website’s Search Engine rank.
5.Cross Browser Compliancy:
By definition, cross browser compliancy refers to the ability for a website, web application, HTML construct or client-side script to support multiple web browsers. It is important for your website to be usable across all operating systems, web browsers, devices, mobile devices, and any other platform that displays your website. The problem with cross browser compliancy is that there are new browsers and devices debuting what feels like monthly, yet we still have the older web browsers like Internet Explorer 6 lingering around. In order to maintain cross browser compliancy, you must adhere to standards based compliant HTML code. This will ensure the highest likelihood that your website will look identical on all devices and browsers.
6.Quality Coding Structure:
When developing your website it is imperative to make sure that it is coded properly using standards based HTML and CSS. HTML provides a means to create structured documents by denoting structural semantics for text such as headings, paragraphs, lists, links, quotes and other items. The title tag is what is displayed at the top of your browser. This gives users a brief description of the content on the page. Search Engines display the title tag when listing results of a search. CSS deals with the website layout, color, font, backgrounds, and other items. CSS defines how HTML elements are to be displayed. Styles are normally saved in external [.css] files. External style sheets enable you to change the appearance and layout of the pages in a website, just by editing one single file.
7.Content:
Good quality content on website is vital. It is important that your content is relevant to your website. Paragraph lengths should be brief and only be about 1-4 sentences long. It is recommended to not have long blocks of text. The sentence length should be about 10 words or fewer. If you do have medium to long sentences they should be spread out and not clumped together. Lists are a great way to make the page look more organized. Bullets and numbered lists help keep those long sentences out of your content. Your content should contain numerous terms that are related to the keywords you wish to target, as well as variations of those keywords. Spelling and grammar should be double checked to ensure that Search Engines will not drop your rank due to misspellings. It is recommended that you or your company frequently update your content as much as possible. This lets your users and Search Engines know that your website is being maintained and that new content is added on regular basis.