Fundamentals of an efficacious website design: Part I

The most important aspect of your business’s success is the web site’s design, as it affects how quickly and easily a user can find the product or service they are looking for. If the design and the user-experience is poor, a user will seek what they are looking for elsewhere.

A compelling, well-structured layout that is easy to use, features concise copy and unobtrusive use of photos and videos will keep users engaged and coming back for more. This meticulous analysis creates new challenges for designers. When every pixel and line of code is evaluated for its contribution to the overall conversion, there needs to be an intense effort towards design planning to make sure the desired results are achieved.

Here are some fundamentals of do’s of an efficacious web design that can aid you in designing pages that are actionable, convertible and optimized:

1. Follow the structured page mechanism:

To help users orient themselves on web pages, the content and different areas need to be structured to help assistive technology identify them.In the recent months we’ve seen an explosion of great grid layouts and css files. Following after the structure and balance of a great magazine/newspaper (e.g. 960.gs and the 1 kb grid), the grid systems help lay out information in a structured and easy to follow format.

Example: structured page mechanism

2. Make your titles on your webpage make sense:

Readers rely on page titles and headings to go through websites and understand what is relevant and valuable. They look to these important page elements to help define the topic, establish context and relevance, and make content meaningful.The content on your webpage should be in accordance to the titles and vice-versa. Senseless titles would be of no help for grabbing viewer’s attention.

Readers rely on page titles and headings to navigate websites and understand what is relevant and valuable — they look to these important page elements to help define the topic, establish context and relevance, and make content meaningful.

Webpage titles

3. Focus on what is important:

Whether you are building a website for a business that sells one specific product or a blog that gives out freebies or writes tutorials, make sure the sole purpose for which it is being designed is the focus of the home page. All. Websites like “Woo Themes” do a great job and putting forward what their main focus is – wordpress themes.

Word press themes

4.Keep it simple:

Studies have proved that sign up forms with more than 3 items (usually – name, email & one other item) have a significantly lower sign up rate than the easier forms. People hate going for things that are complicated. So don’t overdo the things. Make things as easy as possible for your readers by assuming that a 4 year old will be viewing it. It definitely helps get things out in place where they are required to be.

Simple sign up form

5.Go for a simple yet appealing color scheme:

It is a psychological fact that colors greatly influence the human state of mind. Knowing what your readers emotions are will help you in choosing the proper color scheme. The color scheme that you use on your web site can entice the visitors to engage in the goal of your site (i.e. make a purchase or request your services) or abandon it after the first few seconds. Even if they are not aware of it, your visitors will be immensely influenced in their decision to keep browsing your site or to leave it because of the poor usage of colors and other visual displayed elements.