A good web designer will always come up with new and great ideas that will set trends. A GREAT web designer will make a balance between a new web design and the functionality of the site that he is working on.
There are many exercises for web designers that promote ease of use and functionality, an excellent maintenance rate and great user satisfaction. I will adduce some of those elements created to greatly increase the site’s usability and functionality.
Intuitive navigation technique
There is an expression roaming around web users: “If you can’t find it on the first two pages of Google search, it doesn’t exist” The point of this expression is that the end-users often redirect their search from one to three links on the site before they give up. Keep it simple and keep it clean.
The intuitive navigation offers users that they jump from site to site and find the required information quickly and easily. While designing a site, keep in mind that users do not have to jump more than three levels in their search.
Easily readable content
Writing articles for websites differ much from printed publications. Studies have shown that people take more time reading books and magazines than reading content on the web. There was an eye-tracking study performed, which has proven that people read web content in an F-shaped form. It is not much of a reading but a search for the keywords the user is looking for. Therefore, the text on a website has to be brief, with the use of plain English. If you are filling out the reading content on the website, you should pay attention to some factors in order to increase the readability of your site.
Here are some tricks you can use. Break up the text with headings. This way, the content will be far easier to notice. Use small paragraphs. It would be ideal to use one idea per paragraph. This way, you will not jump from one subject to another and will allow users to jump from topic to topic easier.
Add bullet points in appropriate places. When adding things, mark them all! Respect the inverted pyramid order! Always add the web content from the most important topic down to the least important topic. Make good use of whitespace and any form of visual content to break up text and make content easier to read.
Better quality images
Also, a great way to increase the usability of your website is to implement clear and large scaled images of your product and service. For instance, a restaurant website may display images of the tables, the atmosphere of the restaurant at night, their garden, their meals etc. A big part of making a reservation at the restaurant online is the image you create by looking through the galleries.
Good use of whitespace
The whitespace represents the blank space between page elements. The correct usage of whitespace will give your website a kind of harmony and will allow the users to absorb the page content more thoroughly. By using whitespace wisely, you can add your site with a great dose of elegance and sophistication.
Faster loading times
Google has recognized that website loading time is essential to the website functionality. They have implemented a new parameter – page speed. This represents the time that page is needed to load from the server. If your website design has big images and too much content and redirection links, it will slow down your page speed drastically!
As I said, keep it simple and keep it clean. Google will always show fast-loading pages first in its search, so don’t lose your place by bundling up images videos and flash content all over your website. You can increase your site speed by optimizing image sizes and minimizing the redirects from your website.
These are quite useful tips and practices that every web designer should adhere to. Being a good designer is not always enough. In order to be a great web designer, you need to obtain at least some skills in web development, too. You can achieve that by sharing ideas, time and work with some web developers.
This experience will greatly decrease your work, as well as the web developer you are cooperating with and will come in handy for any solo projects you have.