What Goes into a Good Web Design?

 

As a web design company, we get asked often by clients - "What makes a good website design?" It's a complex question with many facets, but let's break it down step-by-step. A successful web design requires careful planning and execution across many elements working in harmony.

Defining Goals and Purpose

The first step when embarking on any new website project should always be clearly defining your goals. As a business, what are the main objectives you want to accomplish with your online presence?

Common goals tend to fall into a few main buckets:

• Lead Generation: Driving new sales inquiries and conversions online
• Information Sharing: Educating visitors about your products, services, values
• Trust Building: Establishing credibility and confidence in your brand

Understanding the core purpose of your site guides all subsequent decisions around design and functionality. For example, an online store prioritizes clear product display and seamless checkout funnels, while a blog focuses more on subscription sign-ups and engagement metrics.

Choosing the Right Platform

Once you've aligned on goals, the next consideration is choosing an underlying content management system (CMS) or website building platform as your foundation. Key elements to evaluate are:

Customization Options: The ability to tailor both visual design and integrated features to suit your needs Learning Curve: Both for initial setup and ongoing content updates Built-in Support: Documentation, forums, chat, etc. to resolve issues Scalability: Handling growing traffic volumes without degrading performance

Popular all-in-one solutions like WordPress and Wix offer simplicity for basic sites. For advanced functionality like customized databases and workflows, custom development may be necessary.

Prioritizing features that facilitate your primary goals here streamlines additional design decisions down the line.

Crafting an Optimal Structure

With a robust platform selected, outlining the information architecture and site map provides an important content blueprint.

Logical Information Flow

Site navigation should guide visitors to your most important pages quickly in an intuitive order that aligns with user goals.

For example, key landing pages could highlight:

• Homepage - Hero section orienting visitors
• About - Company background establishing credibility
• Services/Products - Core offerings
• Contact - Converting leads

Careful menu planning reduces confusing flows for faster goal conversion.

Optimizing Page Layout

Within each page, clear visual hierarchies, quality content, and balanced negative space improve scanability and retention for your messages.

Some page-level best practices include:

Scannable Text Structure

• Short paragraphs
• Numbered or bulleted lists
• Meaningful subheadings

Effective Visuals

• Relevant photography
• Infographics
• Icons and illustrations

Prominent Calls-to-Action

Pages benefit hugely from highlighting desired visitor actions through contrasting shapes, sizes, colors and placement.

Together, strong information architecture unambiguously directs visitors to accomplish site goals.

Establishing Brand Consistency

Beyond site content and structure, visitors recognize and recall brands through consistent visual identities. Elements like:

Logo - Unique mark symbolizing your company Color Palette - Primary/secondary brand colors
Font Styles - Typography reinforcing personality Image Filters - Textures unifying photography

Using these assets across all website pages, graphics, ads, and collateral builds familiarity and trust in your brand. Even small touches like branding menu icons or newsletter sign-up forms improve cohesion.

Additionally, adapting branding for mobile platforms maintains integrity across devices. Testing responsiveness across screen sizes ensures colors, fonts, spacing, and sizing appear as intended.

Optimizing for User Experience

User experience combines visual appeal with intuitive interactions for responsive, gratifying visitor journeys. Some key UX principles include:

Performance

Page load speeds dramatically impact user perceptions and engagement. Studies by Akamai found:

• 20% abandonment rates on 3+ second waits
• 47% expect sites to load in 2 seconds or less

Optimizing images, enabling compression, using caching plug-ins and minimizing external requests improves site speed.

Accessibility

Ensuring information remains readable for those with visual, motor, or cognitive disabilities expands reach. Some best practices are:

• Text size flexibility
• Keyboard navigation
• Color contrast compliance
• Screen reader tagging

Building inclusively enables wider audiences to participate.

Responsiveness

With over 50% of traffic being mobile, responsive frameworks smoothly adapt sites across all devices. Flexible images, menus, and text prevent awkward overlaps or clipping.

Testing responsiveness is also vital - sites appearing correctly on developers' large monitors can still break on mobile. Checking across browser widths frequently prevents nasty surprises.

By honoring visitors through performance, considerate design and device flexibility, desired actions naturally follow.

Constant Optimization

Even after launch, additional user testing and metrics analysis exposes areas needing refinement. Monitoring key indicators like:

• Bounce rates
• Time on site
• Click-through rates

...combined with visitor surveys and feedback highlights usability gaps to incrementally improve.

For example, an e-commerce site might find adding recommendations drives more add-to-cart actions. A blog could realize readers desire easier comment integration.

Website design is never "finished" – regular tune-ups keep sites current, effective and focused on visitor needs over time.

Pulling It All Together

So in summary, when a client asks what goes into effective website design, we can break it down into several key stages:

1. Goal Setting: Define the site's purpose and KPIs
2. Platform Selection: Choose robust underlying CMS technology
3. Information Architecture: Map intuitive content structures
4. Brand Building: Establish consistent identity through visuals
5. Experience Focus: Streamline flows through performance and ease-of-use
6. Continuous Testing: Use data and feedback to incrementally improve

With meticulous attention across these facets, you can craft websites that clearly communicate messages, raise credibility and meet audience needs beautifully. While the ingredients vary across projects, following these foundational principles empowers web design companies to transform brands through quality digital experiences.