11 Tips for Improving Your Website Design

A major website design revolution has hit the digital world in the last decade. With the new mobile-heavy user base, the need for a modern and interactive website design has increased significantly. There is no limit to how customized you need your website to be. But there are certain elements that differentiate a good website from a great website. Here are 11 such tips for improving your website design. 

Almost 60% of global internet traffic in 2022 access their favorite websites from mobile. The ones that don’t, are either heavily reliant on their computers or don’t have access to the internet. Assuming that most of your users are mobile users, you need to cater to their needs by developing a responsive design. 

Responsive design is the practice of building website elements in a particular way. The website reshapes and reorganizes the elements depending on the screen size and ratio. In contrast to developing different versions of a website to show on different screens, an NYC web design agency can develop responsive websites for you that work on every device. 

In a responsive design, the buttons, images, headings, and content are resized and if needed, stacked. It presents a fluid vertical design to the users. In contrast to horizontal designs in desktops and laptops. The responsive design lets users scroll through the website in a uni-directional way. Therefore, users don’t need to scroll horizontally to reveal hidden information. 

94% of internet users believe that navigability is the most crucial factor for them to spend time on a website. With that in mind, it becomes critical for you to improve your website design with navigability in mind. 

However, including links to every page on the header and footer isn’t enough. You need to anticipate the user behavior to include internal links in your website. Buttons also are very effective in making a website more navigable. 

Moreover, if you’re a multi-product brand, including a search feature can improve user-friendliness and navigability. 

Every 1 in 4 visitors will abandon your website if it takes more than 4 seconds to load. Furthermore, customer satisfaction decreases by 11% with every passing second that your website takes to load. 

The primary reasons for a website being slow are heavy graphics, overuse of style codes, and interactive elements. If the server isn’t the cause, you can put these issues to rest by optimizing the images, shortening the codes, and reducing interactive elements. 

Neither every industry is suitable for glamorous websites nor do they require one. For instance, if you’re in the healthcare sector, limit yourself to basic images and cool color schemes. But, for brands in the luxury jewelry sector, you are expected to have an interactive, rich website to present your products. 

Website designers can influence how your customers perceive your brand. Make sure to respect the customer psychology in your web development and stay within the customs set by your industry. 

Using different fonts on different elements of your website slows it down. The browser needs to download every font separately to show the website to the visitor, which can negatively impact customer satisfaction. 

More than that, consistent fonts and visuals associated with your brand’s image make the website 80% more recognizable by your visitors. Just like you grow familiar with a certain smell and sound of a place, your website should also reflect the same psychology. 

Social media icons are one of the most recognizable elements that you can include on your website. In addition to growing familiarity, if you have a significant social media presence, the links will make your visitors believe in your website even more. 

Consider using social media icons on the header, footer, content pages, product pages, and anywhere you see fit. However, if you don’t have a prominent social media presence, leave this for now and return later in the future.  

Customer trust is a huge contributing factor to a website’s success. Publicly showcasing the policy pages like privacy policy, return policy, cookie policy, and others increase user trust by a huge margin. If you’re harvesting user data, telling the user that their information is safe with you means a lot to most customers. 

Policy pages also help you rank higher on search engines. Google blatantly supports websites that have privacy policy pages more than those without them.

With advanced chatbots handling 69% of interactions by themselves, they can increase your conversions a lot. If you still don’t have a chatbot on your website, it’s time to get one. Most automated chatbots give you enough liberty to customize your message and actions. 

Moreover, most chatbots are designed in such a way that your customer representatives can take over anytime and solve complicated issues that are beyond the bots.  

Breadcrumbs are clickable paths that let visitors know about the location of the website they are in. Although breadcrumbs are mostly seen on product pages, you can include them to improve the navigability of your website at your convenience. 

Breadcrumbs help your visitors get back to a previous page without looking for internal links to do so. 

White spaces or negative spaces are intentionally left-out spaces around any graphic element during web development. Usually, white spaces are included in website designs to allow the visuals to breathe. White space around the content of the website makes the elements be themselves and the visitors are kept from being fed too much information at once. 

Reviews and testimonials are social proof of your services and products. If you already have satisfied customers, show off their reviews and testimonials on your website. As for negative reviews, make sure to publicly acknowledge their existence and consider replying with assuring comments. 

The Bottom Line

Hopefully, you’ve understood the elements that make the most impact on website design. To improve your website design, consider developing a responsive website and making it more navigable. Use optimizations to offer faster access to your visitors and include updated policy pages for increased trustability. Furthermore, make sure to use breadcrumbs and chatbots for better conversions. If you lack the experience and expertise to design a website for your brand, you can always contact a professional web design company for help.