Blog
In another article, we looked at 4 signs of web design health. In a constantly-evolving industry, it’s vital that you work hard to keep your website design as effective as possible.
Monday’s post was very much focused on functional aspects of a healthy website design, including SEO features and the quality of your written content.
Today we’ll focus more on the visual components of your website.
The Homepage
Your homepage should create an immediate impression upon a site visitor.
It should give them an overwhelmingly clear idea of what your branding and company are all about. This means that your visual brand needs to be prominent. It also means that your website design needs to create a visual impression which is carefully targeted towards the audience that you’re trying to reach.
Typography / Photography
Today’s best, most creative web designs make bold use of photography and typography. A well-chosen image or typeface can stylize the homepage in a bold, clean way. This also helps to frame your company’s branding, whether your website features your name or logo.
A noticeable feature of many effective website designs, particularly those that are creatively experimental, is the amount of information that they do not include. It goes without saying that a striking image has the ability to make a stronger lasting impression than a paragraph of text, but it’s a brave design decision to leave the information out in the first place.
Multi-Device Compatibility (Responsive Web Design)
A growing sign of an unhealthy website is that it just doesn’t work on a mobile device. If your site is full of text and links that are hard to access on a mobile, touch-screen device then you might need to rethink your design.
The growth of mobile is continuing at a rapid pace, and website design which remains accessible to all users is going to prove highly successful in the next 2-3 years.
Innovative Navigation
Web designers are always looking for innovative new ways to design website navigation. Whilst there is a tightrope to be walked between blandness and inexplicability, alternative navigation systems can be a joy for site visitors to use.
Examples of this would be the relatively common infinite scrolling, where moving down the page allows more content to be accessed (great for blogs) and the growing popularity of single-page web design, where vertical navigation replaces the traditional horizontal menu. Tumblr have made much of this with their popular blogging platform.
The big strength of these navigation systems is that they’re extremely easy to use, yet give the user an exceptional experience, particularly if it’s a responsive web design. It also encourages you to keep clutter away from your website, which tends to suit website design solutions for companies that want to communicate in a minimalist way.
Keeping Web Design Fresh
Website design is a creative, visual and artistic discipline. In our efforts to maximise the information and content in our web designs we risk losing the simple visual pleasures that every successful website brings.
To find out more about our creative web design services please don’t hesitate to contact us today.
