When you attempt to make your website successful, there are several major concepts, heuristics and approaches involved to use in making it more effective as opposed to the others. You will need to understand how users interact with websites, what they expect, and even what the basic patterns are of their behavior. Here are ten easy and effective principles you should consider following to help your site succeed.
1. Don’t make the user think otherwise
The web-page should be obvious, easy to understand and self-explanatory. While starting a site, your job is to make sure everything is clear. Users need to make decisions consciously by thinking about their pros, cons plus solutions.
If the site’s navigation and site architecture aren’t intuitive, the question marks grow and it’s harder for users to understand how the system works. A clear structure with moderate visual clues and easily recognizable links will help users to get what they want.
2. Don’t squander users’ patience
In every project, when you offer your visitors a service or tool, keep your user requirements to
least. The less action required from users to test a service, the more likely it is that a random
visitor is going to try it out.
First-time visitors are definitely willing in order to play with the service a little by
not filling long web forms for an account they don’t think they will ever use it again in the future.
Users need to explore the site and discover your services, without the need of sharing their personal information so that way the user feels more comfortable.
3. Manage to meet user's attention
As websites give both static and dynamic content, a few aspects of one user interface can get more attention than others. Images are more eye-catching than text, just like sentences that are bold catch more attention than plain text.
The human eye is a highly non-linear device. Web users instantly find edges, designs and motions. That’s why video-based advertisements are sometimes annoying and distracting, however from a marketing standpoint, they do the job perfectly of capturing users’ attention.
Focusing the user’s attention to specific areas of your site with just moderate use of visual elements may help your visitors get from point A to point B, without having to think of how it's done.
4. Strive for feature exposure
Modern web designs are sometimes criticized because they use visually appealing devices such as 1-2-3-done-steps, large buttons with visual impacts, etc. Although from the design viewpoint these elements actually are extremely effective by getting visitors through the site content in an easy way.
Allowing the user to see clearly all the features that are available is a basic principle of successful user interface design. It doesn’t matter how that is achieved, whatever issues is that the content is perfectly understood, and that visitors feel comfortable with the way they interact with the system.
5. Make sure the content is well prepared
As the web is different from print, adjusting the writing style to users’ preferences and browsing habits is essential. An ideal solution for effective writing is to come to the point as quickly as possible, categorize the content, use multiple heading levels, and use visual elements and bulleted lists, breaking the flow of uniform text blocks.
Use plain and goal language. Remember that a promotion doesn’t need to sound like advertisement. And give your users a reasonable and goal reason about why they should use your servicing, or even stay on your site.
6. Strive for simplicity
The “keep it simple” principle (KIS) should be the primary goal of your website structure and style. Visitors,rarely browse to enjoy the web design. In most cases, they’re looking for the information they want.
Strive for simplicity instead of complexity that can get more users to your site.
7. Don’t be afraid of white space
It’s hard to overestimate the importance of white space. It not only helps to reduce the cognitive load for the visitors, but it also makes it possible to perceive the information that is presented on the screen. When a new visitor comes to a new design layout, the first thing he tries to do is to scan the page, and divide the content into digestible pieces of information.
When you use complex structures, they are harder to analyze and to get on with what the user requires. It’s usually better to separate two design segments by some white space and not a visible line. The better you manage providing users with a sense of visual structure, the better your content is going to be to perceive.
8. Communicate effectively with a “visible language”
Generally there are 3 essential principles involved in the so-called 'bountiful phrases', in to that content that users see on their screen.
Organize: Provide the user with a conceptual structure that’s clear as well as regular. Reliability, screen layout, relationships as well as navigability are important concepts of organization.
Economize: Do the most with the least amount of cues or visual elements. Consider four major points: simplicity, clarity, emphasis and distinctiveness. Simplicity includes only the elements most important for communication. Clarity means all components should be designed so their meaning is clear.
Emphasis means the most important elements should be easily understood. And Distinctiveness means that the important properties of the necessary elements should be distinguishable.
Communicate: Match the presentation to the user’s capabilities. The user interface must keep legibility,typography, symbolization, multi views, and colour or texture in balance so to communicate successfully.
Use a most of 3 typefaces along with a most of 3 point sizes; a best of 18 words otherwise 50 - 80 characters for each line of text.
9. Conventions are our friends
Conventional design of site elements does not always result in a boring or dull website. Indeed, conventions are quite useful because they reduce the learning curve, or the need to figure out how things work.
With conventions you can gain user’s confidence, trust, reliability and you can prove your credibility. Make sure you understand user's expectations, what they’re expecting from a site navigation, article structure, search place and etc.
10. Test early, test often
This is the so-called TETO principle, which should be applied to almost every web design project. Usability tests will often give crucial insights into significant problems and sometimes issues related to a given layout.
Test not too late, or not too minimal, so never for the inappropriate reasons. It is essential to understand that most design decisions are local meaning that you can’t universally answer if one layout is better than another, as you need to analyze it from a very exacting viewpoint, consideration about the needs, investors, budget etc.
CONCLUSION:
Consider these ten ideas when you’re looking to build a great site. Remember that the KEY ingredient you should always take into consideration is the bottom line. if you want it to work right, you need to test it in order to make absolutely sure.
Author Bio:
This guest post is written by Steve. Currently working as a blogger at Key Difference. His major stream is SEO,Web design.
