The internet is saturated with all kinds of web designs these days; the crazy good, the dull, the copycats and the…meh. It’s no wonder people easily bounce off many sites. The secret to keeping visitors and attracting repeat visits is having a web design that truly makes navigation and information sourcing easier for your website.
According to Sean Redfern, chief designer at Red Fern a web design house in Manchester, the following qualities make a great website:
- Relevant Content
- Ease of Navigation
- Appearance (look and feel)
The last two are critical for any web designer or site owner. Here are 5 ways to make it happen
1. Hamburger Menu
No doubt, the hamburger menu has received both rave reviews and criticism, but its simplicity is a love/hate relationship amongst many designers. We are in the technology era and top level smartphones are popular worldwide. The hamburger menu is a great way to simplify and hide navigation.
The trend isn’t only popular with responsive websites for mobile devices, but is now visible on websites developed for desktops too. Hamburger menus act like navigational drawers to call and reel information across the website, whether it’s for mobile or desktop. The design hides the whole navigation and provides a much sleeker and decent web browsing experience.
2. Flat Design
Flat designs are great for websites because the cut down clutter and make the website visually attractive. Their high compatibility status with trends like material design, responsive web design and minimalism, also makes them attractive for many designers.
Other benefits of integrating a flat design into your website include:
- Simplified topography: Flat design makes simple typefaces on your website appear clear and readable.
- Ghost buttons: They improve UX by reducing user distraction, they form the main component of flat designs.
- Vibrant colour schemes: This makes the templates and UI frameworks interesting and captivating
- Minimalism: provides your user interface with an uncluttered appearance by removing several elements.
3. Avoid Stock Photos
While I have nothing against stock photos, they are just too generic and web visitors can identify generic photos in a second. Imagine your competitor uses the same images on their site, then you aren’t really standing out are you?
Invest in good professional photography and make your own pictures, this way your site stays fresh and authentic. Poor quality photographs that have no relation to your message are even worse than no photographs.
Here’s a bonus tip: If you want to draw attention to a particular piece of content or call-to-action button, include a picture of someone looking at the content.
4. Give your visitors some room
White space is a web designer’s friend. Create simplicity by leaving enough space between your paragraphs and images so the viewer can absorb all the features on your website. If your characters are too cluttered, they will turn off potential users- clutter is one reason why bounce rates keep rising. The ability to use white space effectively keeps web visitors focused on the content and controls user flow.