Menu

All posts in Website Design Practices

Your 9-Step Guide to Website Planning

There’s no way to sugarcoat it: Planning a website or redesign is an enormous undertaking. At the enterprise level, a site redesign can take several months to more than a year to complete, cost hundreds of thousands, even millions, of dollars and span thousands of pages.

If you’re the one planning for the design, you’ll need to consider the time and cost, as well as messaging, site layout, brand identity, user experience and performance.

You’ll need to meet with key stakeholders to define business goals and figure out who your customers are and why they’re coming to your site.

You’ll also need to create content that engages your audience at key touchpoints and nudges them through your funnel.

And that’s just the beginning.

After you’ve conducted research with stakeholders and devised a path forward, you’ll actually need to build the thing. That could mean hiring a third-party web development agency or creating an entirely new codebase in-house. Either way, you’ll have to think about the architecture and SEO structure, third-party integrations and responsiveness across screen sizes and browsers.

Even after the launch, you won’t be done. You’ll need to continue to iterate and test how well the site is performing against benchmarks. (And considering the average lifespan of a website is just two years and seven months, you probably don’t want to spend years building it).

Read more: Your 9-Step Guide to Website Planning

How Minimalism leads to Effective Website Design

What Is Effective Web Design?

Everyone has their own definition of what effective website design and development is and it will vary from one individual to the next since people all have different preferences. Although personal preferences might differ, certain trends do emerge in artwork and design.

Web designers wanting to say ahead of their competitors will frequently just contact their users. When a website is being designed, a minimalist approach might be a highly effective way to connect with users. Designers will often focus on minimalism in order to ensure that the attention of users is focused on the aspects that are most important.

What Does Minimalist Web Design Mean?

Various design trends influence minimalism. Minimalism is about simplicity and staying focused on a design’s most important aspects. Using this approach can demonstrate a subject’s true form and draw out its uniqueness and elegance.

Minimalism in web design aims to avoid making web design mistakes by eliminating aspects that might cause users to lose their attention on the design. The strategy makes it possible for web designers to focus on a design’s most important elements. The user interface can be simplified and unnecessary elements can be eliminated

Minimalist Web Design Features

A design technique’s popularity does not necessarily translate into user needs being supported. The goal of minimalist web design is to create focused imagery in order to create an effective link between the website and the user.

Read more: How Minimalism leads to Effective Website Design

Six web design trends creatives need to prepare for in 2022

If that wasn’t enough, web designers and agencies are currently reeling from another seismic change. This May, Google launched its Page Experience update, which puts a much greater emphasis on user experience when it comes to ranking websites in its listings.

The importance of this should not be underestimated. It means that web designers now need to put much more emphasis on elements like loading speed, interactivity, safe browsing and visual stability…or they’ll quickly see their sites disappear from the first page of Google.

Creative Brand Design, a leading London web design agency, is at the cutting edge of all these developments. So we spoke to them to get their take on the new trends that we can expect to dominate in 2022.

Read on to learn the trends, some examples of them in action, and how to get on board in your web design practice.

1. Fun and optimism

Throughout the 2010s, web and app design was dominated by cooly minimalist, purely functional interfaces. And that made sense at the time. With the iPhone having only appeared in 2007, followed by the first iPad in 2010, most of the public was pretty new to the web. And so making digital services easy to understand, use and navigate was the main priority.
As many creatives pointed out, the side effect was to dampen down the more fun and experimental side of the early web. Now that most people are familiar with digital platforms, there’s arguably space for a return to some of that.

Read more: Six web design trends creatives need to prepare for in 2022

 

5 Web Design Resources that will Inspire you website

The appearance of a website plays an important role in any business whether it is big or small.

The website of your business interacts with the prospects on your behalf. That is the reason why people judge the credibility of your business by its design. While designing your website, keep in mind that your website should be well equipped to cater to a good user experience. A good layout, images, and typography matter more than we usually think.

A study by Stanford found that people quickly evaluate a site by visual design alone. In short, the design of your website:

Sets a good first impression

Builds credibility

Projects authority

Proves legitimacy

Highlights your expertise

Building a website from scratch can be a daunting task. When you fall short of ideas, take inspiration from others. Make them your muse. When you look at the work of others, you gain a new perception of looking at things that might have been missing in your own work. Also, this way you keep pace with the latest trends.

In this article, you will find places to look for the best website designs in the world. There is a massive amount of resources available on the internet to get inspired from. But it can be overwhelming. So without any delay check out a concise list of the top five best website designs to seek inspiration for your ideas.

Read more: 5 Web Design Resources that will Inspire you website

4 Elements of Modern Website Design You Need to Know About

Every business needs a website. No matter what industry you are in, a website can help you boost your visibility, gain more exposure, generate leads, and ultimately boost your sales for more profit.

But that’s not it. There’s so much more a website can do to help your business become successful. For example, most customers will visit your website and take a tour of it before they make a purchase. You can use this opportunity to highlight your offers and convince them to buy more.

You can even use it to build credibility by displaying customer testimonials. Many marketers also offer customer support through their sites. In a way, your website is one of your biggest assets in helping you create a successful business.

So it’s important for you to design it with all the modern elements that can not just boost user experience but also help you remain at the top of your marketing game.

But how do you do that? If you’re not sure how to create a professional website complete with all modern elements, stop worrying now. In the following section of this article, we’ll tell you about some of the most important elements of website design that can keep you ahead of your competitors.

So let’s find out,

1. Optimized Speed

Imagine a situation in which you excitedly land on a website, hoping that you’ll make some purchase. But as you browse through it, you have to wait endlessly for a single product to be fully visible. The website is so slow that the loading sign doesn’t seem to disappear. What would you do? Keep scrolling or opt-out of the website?

If you chose the second option, you’re definitely on the right track. No one likes slow websites. Sites that take longer to load have a higher bounce rate and lower average time on the page. Not to mention, it majorly affects your conversion rate too. According to reports, even a single-second delay in your loading speed can bring down your conversion rate by 7%.

If you don’t want that to happen to your business, you have to optimize your website speed. It’s one of the most important elements of web design that can improve the user experience on your site. If your site takes longer than 1.7 seconds to load, it’s time to work on optimizing it for the best results. The low speed can be because of your web hosting service, unoptimized images, bulky files, etc. Figure out the reason that’s causing it and fix it at the earliest possible.

Read more: 4 Elements of Modern Website Design You Need to Know About

A Website Design Can Make Or Break A Company

It is very important to have a professional website in order to make itself known and promote its activity to your customers.

Creating a professional website is not easy. In general, it requires the intervention of a web agency. This allows the new business to obtain a good quality professional website.

Why should new businesses create their website?

The professional website replaces traditional business cards and commercial brochures. The first instinct of a potential customer who is interested in your business will be to search the internet and social networks.

If a user cannot find information about your business, it will inevitably create a trust problem. In addition, research is very likely to land this prospect on the website of one of your competitors.

Your professional website, provided it is well referenced on search engines, will be an excellent commercial tool for your business.

Then, when the website is efficient, it will allow you to create a first bond of trust with your future customers.

What information should be indicated on a professional website?

The main objective of your website is to provide as much information as possible to Internet users about your activity.

The richer and more precise the information, the more likely the Internet users who will contact you will turn into customers.

The observation of competing websites is rewarding. This makes it possible to identify the important elements to be provided on your website, and to observe their practices.

Basic information

First of all, the website should offer a complete description of all your activities . A surfer should immediately have a glimpse of what you are offering.

For a service provision activity (consultant, freelance, trainer, coach, etc.), it is important to highlight the list of proposed assignments, your professional background, your diplomas, your skills, your experiences within different companies.

For a trading activity, it is necessary to present the range of products offered by the company, in detail and highlighting its advantages.

Read more: A Website Design Can Make Or Break A Company

Is Your Website Helping or Hurting Business?

Online presence is one of the leading factors in successful business practice across all industries today. Though we’ve been walking the path toward a digitized economy for a decade or two, the pandemic shifted that transition into high gear.  

Now, if a laundry’s website is hard to find, navigate or even look at, the consequences can be significant. No longer are reputation, print advertising and location the main drivers of business.  

Online presence, design and visibility are essential elements of an effective prospect outreach strategy.   If you’re wondering whether your website is helping or hurting business, here are some questions to ask.  

In Part 1, we looked at questions about how trustworthy your site looks and if it’s fast enough. This time, we examine questions about the findability and security of your site.  

CAN PROSPECTS FIND YOUR SITE EASILY? Search engines are the crossroads of the Internet where nearly 93% of all the web traffic flows.   When prospects want to find services you supply, they’ll search for it in a search engine and, if your site is search engine optimized (SEO), there’s a good chance you’ll be one of the first choices on the results page.  

If it’s not, your competitors who are optimized will likely get that lead.  

• A simple SEO test  

To get an idea of where you’re at, search for your company’s name in your preferred search engine. If it shows as the first or second result, that’s a good start.  

Now, search for a product or service you provide like a prospect might. It could say “linen service in (your town or city)” or  “uniform rental near me.” If your site is in the top five, that’s great. If not, things could be better.  

When looking to rank high for certain keywords, it’s important to have content built around those keywords. If they aren’t present on your site, or if the content around them isn’t written well or with SEO principles in mind, you will have a hard time ranking well enough to be seen.  

Read more: Is Your Website Helping or Hurting Business?

Color Trends in Web Design: 2021 Edition

2021 will most likely become the year of major changes and drastic breakthroughs in the field of web design. We can already witness exciting color palette solutions and original uses of gradients and duotones, and from this post, you’ll discover the main trends in the color schemes for websites in 2021 that are not to be missed. Keep reading if you want your designs to be fresh and up to date.  

Top 5 Color Trends to Follow in Web Design So what are the hottest color trends 2021 that every web designer should follow?  

Dark Mode Dark themes are the latest trend in app design. After Apple had finally released dark mode for iPhones and macOS, it was only a matter of time before it appeared everywhere. Top web design agencies also decided to implement this mode for their solutions. Once they were rare, now dark themes are everywhere.  

When done well, the dark mode has many advantages. It reduces eye strain, making the nightly online experience much more pleasurable. They are easier to read in low light, like while on the subway or a bus. And they can significantly reduce battery consumption.  

Gradients Gradients and color filters have been around for a couple of years now and still haven’t lost their popularity among designers. First, color filters started becoming popular because of the Instagram-oriented public mentality, but now they are used to create additional textures and add more depth to basic colors.  

As for the successful examples, check out Grammarly’s social networks.  They use gradients instead of flat colors for their graphics.  

Read more: Color Trends in Web Design: 2021 Edition

Importance of automation for your website & SEO team

The time for the website promotion might range from several days to months. With manual SEO, the implementation of on-page and off-page optimization tasks could be really tedious. Thus, automated SEO is widely used by many webmasters these days.  

Owing to SEO automation tools and software, it takes less time and effort for search engine optimization activities. It is sometimes considered that automated SEO could not benefit your website promotion. On the contrary, automatic SEO was believed to be hazardous and even harmful.  

However, this statement is far from reality because the effect of automated SEO is the opposite. It helps SEO teams to streamline repetitive tasks, which allows dedicating more time to other important SEO activities.  

What is automatic SEO? The principles of automatic SEO imply the utilization of software to perform daily tasks faster. As a result, effective SEO teams become more productive when using SEO automation tools. Automated SEO considerably reduces the amount of time and resources spent on various SEO activities.  

Automated processes provide a possibility for webmasters to spend less time on routine daily tasks. While an SEO expert may spend minutes on finding broken links, for instance, an SEO automation tool can accomplish that in seconds.  

How does automated SEO work? The concept of automated SEO refers to the desktop software and utilities designed to streamline activities dedicated to search engine optimization. Automation tools assist webmasters in repetitive tasks that could be easily systematized. Those are usually related to position tracking, backlink profile analysis, finding broken links, site audit, and reporting.  

To get the most benefits out of automation, webmasters first need to decide which processes to streamline. Based on that, dedicated SEO automation tools should be selected for facilitating chosen activities.  

Read more: Importance of automation for your website & SEO team

The Importance of Effective Web Design for eCommerce

A million different things go into running a business, so it can be alarmingly easy to forget some crucial components. Arguably the most important of these is your website. It might surprise you to learn just how significant your digital presence is and the impact it can have on your audience.  

Of course, as an eCommerce owner, you already know that a website matters in terms of purchases—without one, your customers wouldn’t be able to buy your products. But what you may not know is the influence it has on consumer assumptions about your brand.  

There’s a lot more to an eCommerce website than its product page and shopping cart. Here, we will be explaining all of that to you and why effective web design for eCommerce matters.  

It Is the Store-Front of the Digital Age For better or for worse, the high street is declining in popularity, and the importance of online marketing is increasing. As one Europe digital agency explains, rather than your shop window, customers will be judging your website. It could be the deciding factor between a purchase or a pass.  

If you want to secure a larger audience, you need to ensure your shop window is looking its best. If a potential client lands on your site and finds the site disappointing, they won’t bother looking at your products or services.   Don’t get lax, and don’t let customers slip through your fingers—invest in web design!  

Read more: The Importance of Effective Web Design for eCommerce
TotalWeb Partners Hear about our latest news and updates before anyone else.
Dismiss
Allow Notifications