Fundamentals of Good Website Design

Now more than ever, having a good website is so important as a business. This is because, more people than before are using the internet to buy their goods, meaning that a great website can help your business attract more customers and therefore make more sales.

It’s crazy to see how many businesses fail to have a well-built, optimally functioning website, with many firms falling into this pitfall simply because they don’t know what good web design is. To help ensure that your website is looking a-okay and isn’t scaring potential customers off, here are the fundamentals of good website design that you need to follow.

The Website’s Purpose

To create a good website that isn’t confusing or hard to follow, you need to have a clear understanding of the purpose of the website as well as the purpose of each page. Knowing these will help you create better copy and a more appropriate website. So, figure out if the website is to either describe your expertise, build your reputation, generate leads, or provide sales and aftercare, as these are all distinctive focuses and will drastically alter how you go about building your website.

Simplicity

You don’t want to create a website that’s too messy and distracting, so the best way to avoid this is to keep your website design simple and clean. This simplicity can help evoke a professional feel to your website, as well as a confidence in your service. 

You don’t want your home page to be filled to the brim with loads of text and images all competing for attention. Instead, try limiting your word count, getting directly to the message you want to say, and have a couple of images to give life to your page.

You also want your color choices to be simple, so it’s important not to have too many colors, especially if they’re vastly different from each other, as you don’t want to create an eyesore. Really think about the colors you want to use, as colors have deep psychological connotations that can affect how a customer interacts and views your brand.

The same can be said for your typeface and fonts. You don’t want to be using anything too flashy, as this runs the risk of making your copy hard to read. You should also limit yourself to only three different fonts on your entire website, and they should also be from the same font family, to help create uniformity.

Navigation

When making a website, especially for a business, you need to design it in such a way that there is a natural progression to your desired end goal. This means that for websites that are selling products, your pages should funnel your customers to a transaction page.

The best way to do this is to have buttons and links on every page that moves the user to something else. Make sure to label these links with call-to-actions, which are basically instructions that persuade the user to do something.

Try your best not to make the navigation too confusing and hard to understand, as this may overwhelm customers and encourage them to leave your site and shop with a competitor.