In today’s competitive scenario, it is of critical importance to design an exceptional website that would help you stand apart from the rest and stay way ahead of your competitors.

A wonderfully designed website however, is not just enough; a good website should assist you in building your brand as well as business strategy.

An efficient team would be delivering personalized design concepts for literally every project. Your website should be suited to your business model. Whether your company is looking for a communication platform or sales focused website, competent designers today use suitable tools to create a site that certainly enhances your online presence and definitely takes your business forward.

Having your website designed professionally could generate additional new potential clients. This is a reason why everyone nowadays has their focus on effective web design and this is why UI design matters.

1) Responsive Web Design Strategy

Thanks to the incredible rise in the number of mobile devices, responsive web designing is not anymore a UX-only discipline. All marketers need to understand and consider responsive web designing as a component of their strategic planning. It may not be necessary for you as a content marketer to know all the tricks of the designing and development of a responsive web. However, you need to know what exactly RWD is. Also, you need to know your exact content marketing responsibilities.

The web world is said to have undergone some technological changes and responsive web design is at the forefront as far as content marketers are concerned. Responsive web design implies you can write content and publish it once. The layout actually changes according to the capabilities and size of the device.

There has been an astronomical rise in web surfing through mobile devices. You are confronted with a multitude of diverse screen sizes across tablets, smartphones, phablets, desktops, TVs, consoles and even wearable devices like smart watches. As the screen size is constantly changing, you need to optimize your website for all these mobile devices. Your website should be designed in such a manner that it should be able to adapt to whatever screen size.

2) Maintaining Consistency

It is a good idea to keep elements such as color, layout or font fairly consistent in your site. Your site should have a smooth flow from one page to another. This means that your font, color and layout structure should be basically the same throughout your site to maintain consistency. It is important to keep the elements across all pages constant so that the viewers do not feel lost.

3) No Stock Photography

People are no longer interested in the glamour shots. They are looking for definitely more realistic view of exactly what a product is portraying or representing. Dry stock photos with dull white background are definitely not in vogue. People are looking for story and personality. Use only meaningful images in your website. Your images generate subconscious messages that are transmitted to your audience.

4) Using Responsive Images

Designers can now create responsive layouts which are known to serve various image sizes of different resolutions. Designers are now able to develop mobile-optimized images that are ideal for smaller screens and they can then come up with higher-resolution versions for larger screens. You may use JavaScript and htaccess files for different sized images according to screen width. You could also, use tools such as TinySrc that lets you only prefix all large pictures with a TinySrc URL and the rest is left to the tool to do.

5) CSS Media Queries

You could follow a tutorial from CSS-Tricks, which discusses ways to bring about subtle modifications with media queries and ways of using media queries on a single style-sheet. For example, in case of a fluid-width design with a sidebar that is 35 per cent of the actual width of the page, then based on the actual width of the browser window, one could tell what to do if the browser is very narrow, or what to do if it is wider, and also, what exactly to do if it is really quite wide.

6) Using Responsive Data Tables

Data tables are often pretty wide. You may see the whole table by zooming out, but in that case, you would need to scroll both horizontally and vertically to be able to browse the table. One best solution seems to be reformatting the table for much better readability. Yet another way out is to display a pie-graph according to the data. You may even consider adapting the table into an effective mini-graphic which is just right for narrow screens, (instead of interfering with the content, while the full table is on display.)

7) Design a Great Navigation System

The best way to engage visitors in your site is by developing a solid and impressive navigation system that would effectively support all search preferences. The most vital factor in web design is the ease with which one can find information. If visitors are not able to find the information they are looking for, they would lose interest and leave. The navigation system should be intuitive and self-explanatory.

• Your primary navigation structure should be simple.
• Always integrate navigation controls into the footer of your site.
• Breadcrumbs should be kept on every page barring the homepage so people are well aware of their exact navigation trail.
• Provide visitors with an option to search your site using keywords, by adding a visible search box towards the top.
• Minimize the provision of unnecessary navigation options as far as possible.
• It is a good idea to keep three levels of navigation, and not too many.
• Should you include links in your webpage, clearly mention and explain their destinations, and this is also very effective for SEO.
• Prepare your site keeping your target audience in mind.
• Ensure that the overall navigation of the site is simple, so that users can find their way to what they want without running through a complicated procedure. Ensure that deliberation on the part of the user is minimized by integrating a simple interface.

8) Minimize Flash and Animation

Minimize the use of JavaScript and Flash as far as possible, as a number of mobile devices and tablets do not support Flash, and this would sorely inhibit the navigability of your website. Several web browsers run outdated versions of Flash plugins, and some may not even have Flash installed, so you must keep the masses in mind. Switch to HTML5 if applicable, in case you require animations. HTML5 is a fantastic browser-compliant substitute for Flash.

9) Make Your Site Accessible

If you are aspiring for an overwhelming traffic then you need to make your site compatible and attuned to multiple devices and browsers. You must ensure that your website can be accessed by everyone visiting it no matter what application or browser they are using.

10) Usability

It is important to keep in mind that the success of a site depends on its usability and not on its visual design. It is best to use a user-centric design if you have a profit-oriented website in mind. The success of a website depends on its usability because its existence is meaningless if users cannot use it. There is absolutely nothing wrong in using eye-catching 1-2-3-done steps or large buttons with attractive visual effects. It is necessary to let the user view all the available functions clearly. Feature exposure contributes to a good user interface design. The visitors should be able to interact with the system comfortably.

11) Pay Attention to the Writing Style

Web content writing is much different from print. You need to write as per users’ browsing habits and preferences. Use objective language. No one is interested in reading promotional content. Everyone would avoid long text blocks without keywords and images. You need to talk business and provide crisp and concise content. You need to categorize your content, remember to use subheadings, use bulleted lists and visual elements to break the monotony of blocks of uniform text.

12) Minimize User Workload

First of all it is best to minimize cognitive load so that it becomes easier for visitors to understand the idea behind your system. Also, ensure that less action is needed from users to try a service. Only then would a random visitor try it out. First time visitors are not interested in filling web forms for some account which they may never use again. It is a wise idea to design your website in such a way that visitors have the ease and freedom to browse the site without being compelled to share private data. They would keep coming back to your site once they discover your services.

13) Use Negative Space

Using negative space in your web design is an excellent idea. Nobody wants fluff. Visitors should be able to figure out precisely what they have in front of them without too much searching. Designers should not worry about negative space while creating a site. You just need to create normally and then go through it and remove stuff wherever required to get the desired look.

14) Conventions Are Fruitful

Incorporating conventional site elements need not necessarily make your website boring. In fact, conventions are good for reducing the learning curve or the need to understand how a particular thing works. Don’t you think it would be a usability crisis if different websites had completely different RSS-feeds’ visual presentation? Conventions help you to achieve users’ trust, confidence and reliability. It is a good idea to keep track of users’ expectations and understand precisely what expectations they have from search placement, site navigation, text structure etc.

15) Test Early, Test Often

TETO-principle is vital for all web design projects. Usability tests are great for providing critical insights into the major issues and problems associated to a given layout. You must test early and never too late. You should go for comprehensive tests.

Conclusion

There is something quite common between web designing and fashion designing. It is a dynamic world and what’s in today will have no relevance a few days later. It is best not to follow trends. Instead, you can try out or test your own ideas.