What Makes an IDEAL Website? 5 Design Tips to Follow

Throughout my career as a web designer, I have encountered thousands of websites.

I have analyzed them and found a lot of recurring flaws in their designs.

Here is my best effort by compiling a list of five tips that will help you the most.

1. Address the pain point of the user

My website is here to solve a problem.

It’s here to help you with giving more information regarding improving your website and making your business more profitable through it.

Each and every business website online is there to solve a problem, whether it be via sharing valuable information, helping you book an appointment, presenting portfolio work, etc.

In simple words, “Website is a tool for your business, which you have to use wisely”.

If a website is designed beautifully but fails to address the problems that users have, then it’s useless.

Hence your website should be optimized to share what pain points the user has, and after that provide a solution to them.

2. Building trust & credibility

How do you choose which restaurant is best? Most probably from one of the following ways:

• One which has the most amount of people
• One that has the most positive reviews
• One recommended by your friend

We don’t want to regret making a decision, hence we rely on social proof from other people for that product/service.

The same applies to a website. A website that displays the most amount of social proof will generate a lot of credibility.

And credibility is one of the key factors responsible for business.

Here are a few ways to use social proof to make your website more trustworthy:

1. Displaying reviews & testimonials
2. Sharing companies that featured you
3. Awards & Certificates
4. Logos of past clients

3. Crystal clear hero section

80% of visitors leave the website without scrolling.

The hero section (or the top section of the home page), has a very crucial part in grabbing the attention of the user and keeping them on the website.

When someone visits your website, within a snap of a finger he should answer these two questions:

i) Where I am?

ii) How is this site going to help me?

If you fail in doing so, you will lose visitors right away.

Normally, websites have hero sections that are too generic and don’t answer these two questions.

Not displaying information properly frustrates users, as they don’t know what they are looking at.

Let’s take a look at the components of the hero section:

a) Hero image/animation/video

It should be a highly crisp image/animation/video and must represent your business in a nutshell.

Here are a few examples,

• Construction companies can show one of their construction projects in progress
• Florists can show beautiful displays of flowers in the shop

b) Compelling headline

“If your budget is 1$, then 80 cents must be spent on the headline”

– David Ogilvy, Father of Advertising

Headlines have always been a tool for capturing readers’ attention and delivering a message through them.

A website is no different.

You should thoroughly test and brainstorm a headline that explains your business uniquely in just a few words.

Make the headline concise and informative.

c) Informative sub-text

The sub-text should explain your company more clearly.

It can be in the form of paragraphs or bullet points.

d) Strong call-to-action buttons

A call-to-action must lead users to the most important task of the website (like booking a meeting).

Or it should be something that provides users with more information to keep them hooked on the website.

e) Social Proof

Having some sort of social proof in the hero section is vital, as your trust starts building right away.

Note: Having all five of these hero components aren’t necessary. You can avoid using a few of them.

4. Avoid using random colors, and stick to an impactful color scheme

The use of colors is much more than just making your website look pretty. They have always been an important part of advertising and brand building.

Color schemes are used to add direction to the design of our website.

Not following specific color scheme results in the website being extremely busy, confusing, and lacking any sense of direction.

Here’s how colors can help us with the well-known AIDA model in marketing:

i) Capture attention

Creating contrast in the content is necessary, as it helps to prioritize what’s worth focusing on and what isn’t.

And colors create contrast effectively and hence grasp our attention.

ii) Hold interest

As soon as we got our user’s attention, then it’s important to share, ‘What exactly we are offering?’.

We can do so by clearly explaining what our service/product is.

iii) Build the desire

Now, we have our user’s interest as well. Next, we have to build desire, which is “a feeling of needing our product/service”.

Presenting social proof is the way to do so.

The more powerful the social proof is, the more the users will desire to have it.

iv) Encourage action – CTA

In the end, we have to provide a way to complete the desired task.

On the website, this is achieved by call-to-actions.

We have to keep sharing appropriate CTA’s throughout our website so that users don’t need to keep searching where to click.

5. Choose conversion over aesthetics

You might have seen a few designers who keep glorifying these things on a website:

• website aesthetics
• amazing special effects
• three-dimensional animations
• And so much more craziness

At first glance, you might think website design is getting more intricate.

In reality, these types of sites are just a waste of time.

I call these types of websites “fluff”, no serious business ever uses these kinds of websites.

Here are a few examples of a few of the biggest software companies:

i) Google

ii) Facebook

iii) Reddit

All these companies have enough budget to make the most aesthetic designs.

Despite that, their websites are really simple and minimal. Do you know why?

That’s because a business can’t compromise with high conversion rates.

Conclusion

Design for websites is ever evolving thing, but a few basic principles will always be applicable no matter what.

Learn those principles and keep improving your website.

Thanks for reading.