How to Master Website Design & Development

There are 3 new websites born every second. There are over 1 billion websites online. With these kinds of numbers, you’d be forgiven for thinking putting an effective website online was a piece of cake. Despite everyone and their cat having a website these days, it remains very challenging to launch an effective website that attracts, engages and retains customers.

When working with a web design agency (like ourselves, hi), it’s crucial to ensure your website design and development align with best practices.

There’s the technical side of things, sure – decisions to be made around platforms and content management systems and a whole host of other things that we all just take for granted when interacting with a good website or app. These things seem like they should be simple to implement because as a user they are simple to use, but this is often not the case. 

Fortunately, when it comes to putting your website together, there are some basic guidelines you can follow to ensure your site runs smoothly and keeps your customers happy.

WordPress is our preferred platform and content management system. The tips below will apply to most builds, but there will be a few pointers that apply only to WordPress sites. Write what you know, am I right? Yes, yes I am.

Make it Look Nice

Known as the aesthetic-usability effect, researchers discovered a strong correlation between the participants’ perception of how easy a tool was to use and how much they liked the look of it. The research indicates users are strongly influenced by the design of an interface (or website). They are much more likely to be forgiving of bugs or minor usability issues when something looks good.

Good design triggers positive responses in people, leaving them with a positive impression of your brand. Think about your audience and who you want to attract – are you trying to offer them Simply Better or the Basics? Your website design should reflect this.

Our designers leverage their experience to ensure our customers leave happy with beautiful websites. Each client receives a bespoke design guaranteeing their website stands out amongst the crowd. Pre-built themes and widget-based builds are totally valid ways of getting started, but once you’re feeling a bit more established and confident in your brand or business, there’s absolutely no excuse for having a cookie-cutter website. Get in touch to find out more about our web design services.

Make it Fast

Unfortunately, you can’t just pretty up your site and get away with it. We’ve all judged a book by its cover, a movie by its trailer, and definitely a website by its home page.

Page speed is a key part of this. How many times have you closed a tab or window on a website that has frozen or is taking forever (okay, like 10 seconds) to open? There are a billion other websites you could be browsing, why would you decide to wait on this one?

Common factors for a slow page speed include:

• Poorly formatted imagery
• Inefficient / bloated code
• Outdated plugins
• Slow server or network connection

Optimise your imagery using online tools or by working with designers who can export the best-quality artwork for your needs, while code bloat can be resolved by avoiding popular page builders and pre-built themes.

When you build on WordPress you often rely on a number of plugins for functionality or features to save time on custom development tasks (remember we were talking about simple things actually being difficult?). These plugins need to be looked after and kept up to date to ensure a secure, speedy & happy website.

The server and network connection side of things is a bit more technical, but essentially comes down to the service you choose and whether they’re able to deliver the specs your site needs.

Fortunately, we offer competitive hosting packages alongside our web design & development services which allows us to look after each of those things for you. Funny that…

Forget the rest of the article, let’s speed things up: contact the Proactive team today and let’s get your project started.

Make it work (for everyone)

A speedy nice-looking website will win you customers, but the thing had better actually work if you want to hold onto them. Accessibility and usability are two huge areas of interest in the web design and development communities.

Usability relates to whether your customers are able to use your website to achieve their goals: Can they find out your opening hours? Can they find the information they’re after? Can they buy the thing? They really want to buy the thing, why isn’t the website letting them buy the thing?

You can check your website’s usability by reviewing how efficiently your customers can achieve their goals, correcting any elements that produce errors, and simplifying the journey to ensure it is easily learned. With successful customer journeys comes improved customer satisfaction. It’s a no-brainer to engage in user research and usability testing to ensure a smooth journey for all involved.

And we do mean all. Accessibility standards are improving rapidly with improved best practices and guidelines being applied to many more websites every…well, second. Businesses should reference the WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) to learn more about what’s expected, encouraged and recommended. 

Your website is your business’ shopfront; neglecting accessibility loses you business. Accommodations need to be made within designs and development to ensure all customers have the same or similar experience regardless of ability. It doesn’t make business sense not to be considering the needs of all your users.

There are a few additional elements to consider when improving your site accessibility, including colour choices and typography styles, but broader concepts around how understandable and perceivable your content is should also be considered. If you have videos on your website, for example, do you have a transcript or a text alternative for users with visual impairments? Some of the guidelines may seem limiting, but you are actually removing limits for a wide range of users. Good job! Check your current website’s accessibility by using online tools such as WAVE (Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools). Alternatively, give us a shout and we’ll run up a report for you!

Simple doesn’t suck

It’s important to remember that your customers are also users of the internet. They have browsed other websites too. Big websites, small websites, websites they never knew they wished existed but were delighted to find did actually exist… the point being: your users know how they expect websites to work. There is absolutely no need to reinvent the wheel. 

Don’t go hiding information or making it difficult for your customer to engage with the website. If something looks like a button, it should work like a button. Keep it accessible, cater to their expectations. This increases your customers chances of having a positive experience with your brand and platform.

Think about it, how many times have you let out a little swear word when you walk into the supermarket to find they’ve changed all the shelves around? Or when your favourite bus service rolls out a brand new website removing the easily accessed one feature you used all the time and it makes you want to have a little cry for better times? Just me?

Leverage the mental models already in place, allow the user to focus on the task at hand rather than trying to figure out where you’ve put everything. It is important not to overwhelm the customer or they’ll just stop what they’re doing and leave. You need to minimise the effort required by the customer to interact with your business.

This means limiting the number of items you show at one time, or providing concise short pieces of content to help guide them on their way (nothing like this rambling odyssey, definitely don’t do this). The ‘Keep It Simple, Stupid’ approach especially benefits mobile users and often leads to smoother transitions between desktop and mobile designs. With so many different devices and screen sizes out there, it’s essential to consider effective and efficient responsive design and development when working on a new website. Studies from SEMRush have shown that mobile users, though often the more frequent visitor, are not inclined to hang around. The desktop users spend a bit more time browsing and interacting, but the mobile user is in and out. By keeping things simple, you’re ensuring those users get what they need in the time they want it. That is a positive user experience that will hopefully result in a much longer visit next time they have a chance to spend a bit more time at the laptop.

Quality content is crucial

There is absolutely no point in featuring badly written or poorly considered content on your website. People won’t read it and it guarantees a poor user experience. Instead, we recommend engaging in a proper content strategy plan to deliver the information your users need in a clear, readable manner to help create a positive user experience.

Users are searching for something when they land on your website and it really works out when you make it easy for them to find it – be that business hours, contact forms, product information, career opportunities etc. You’ll see higher conversion rates and engagement. You’ll also see increased brand familiarity if you get the tone right and consistent across your different marketing channels.

Remember who you’re talking to and ensure the content is appropriate for them. Make use of headings to keep it easily searchable (and improve your own SEO points), and consider your calls to action across every page. User research can really help with getting these things right and appropriate for your customers. Remember, users have much shorter attention spans than before so your opportunity to pull them in is pretty limited – make the most of it!

Speaking of shorter attention spans, I think that’s plenty in the way of things to consider when approaching a fresh web design project.

Do you feel ready to take on the challenge of improving your offering and implementing the tips above? Get in touch with the team today to see how we can help! We’d love to hear about your project.