Any good website design is based on 3 core design principles. These can either make or break the website and determine whether it will be successful or not.
Sure, you could go and find a WordPress, Wix or Squarespace template off the shelf for your business but if you don’t understand how to put the website together properly using the following principles, it will fail.
Understanding these 3 principles and how to utilise them is essential:
- Navigation
- Hierarchy
- Use of colour
Navigation
Clear, well laid out navigation is one the most important features your website should have. If a visitor doesn’t know how to navigate your site then it is doomed.
Good navigation also let’s the user know more about your business and whether you provide the products and services they are looking for instantly. Remember, a visitor will only spend about 15 seconds on your website to decide whether it is what they are looking for before going elsewhere.
Have your navigation clearly visible and well laid out, usually at the top of every page. Don’t hide it or make visitors click multiple buttons to try and find it.
Whether your website is one page or 100 pages, the same principle applies and you need to let your visitors know what content is available on your website.
Hierarchy
Hierarchy means what you see first. Ie. where is your attention going to as a user
If everything on the page has the same hierarchy such as the size of text, links and call to actions, then what happens is that everything tries to grab your attention at the same time and therefore nothing actually ends up grabbing your attention because you are too overwhelmed.
Lay out your website and pages with a clear hierarchy so people know what is important and the things that need to grab attention actually do.
Colour
As well as using colour to communicate emotion and brand identity, we also use it to help the user denote functionality on the website. It defines what is important and helps the user navigate the website efficiently and effectively to a desired outcome i.e whether something is a button, is clickable and whether something is important.
Be consistent when using colours on your website otherwise things become confusing for the user longer to figure out what is important and how to clearly navigate the website.
