Does Your Website Pass the Design Cloud Test?
If you're in the process of creating or updating your website, you'll know that deciding on the design can be difficult. That’s because there is so much to consider when it comes to website design - for example, which design is going to help convert the most people on the site? Which layout will be the best to organise your products? What on earth is layered navigation and how should yours work?
In this article, we're going to discuss 5 must-have elements on your site. These are elements every site should have and are a good foundation block to build from when creating a design that provides a great user experience for site visitors.
Do you have a clear colour palette?
First up, you’re going to need a clear set of brand guidelines. Your brand guidelines will include key details like fonts, colours, icons and more that your brand will use across all marketing channels. Knowing this before designing your site is crucial so that you can seamlessly tie in every page to a strong brand identity.
Why is it so important to use a clear colour palette on your site? According to a study by Review42, 'Colours affect people's behaviour, mood, and stress levels' and so should be chosen wisely, but also because 'Colours increase brand awareness by 80%.' When you have a clear colour palette for your brand, every bit of marketing material you do can contribute to your brand awareness and be more recognisable as belonging to you. The more instantly recognisable your brand, the more memorable it is. Games like 'The Logo Game' prove to us the power of colour in recognising brands, so make sure your site reflects your brand in the colours it uses.
If you're looking for more help coming up with your colour palette, there are loads of colour scheme generators out there. You could try the Coolors or Adobe colour palette generators or just chat to one of our designers today!
Are you using optimised web banners?
Banners usually take up some of the prime space in a website design, so they need to be optimised as much as possible.
So, how exactly can you optimise your web banners? Every design element you use on a website should have custom dimensions to minimise any risk of pixelated graphics. If you know you have a certain dimension available for the web banner, you need to design for that size at a minimum. Stretching to fit a space will pixelate the design, and that will lead to a much less polished overall look. In addition to this, bear in mind the effect that banners on the site can have on SEO. To optimise for search engines, your site needs to load quickly. For better loading times try to keep the file size as small as possible whilst maintaining quality on any images used. You can do this by using a free image compressor tool online and by choosing the right file type such as PNG to allow for a high-quality yet compressed image.
Did you know it is very common for users of a site to read a web page in an 'F' shape? This can help guide you in how you lay out any content included on your banner. Using the 'F' shape can help you create a hierarchy of content, and will let you place any copy in the right spot to convey your message as fast as you can.
And lastly, always include a strong call to action! Your call to action should be clear and concise so that every viewer can clearly understand how to navigate your site even at a glance.
If you've got all of this in place already (along with relevant graphics), your web banner passes the Design Cloud test! If not and you need some more help, learn more about how our designers can create stunning banner designs for you here.
Do you use timeless fonts?
Remember all the projects in school you used WordArt on? They'd look pretty dated now if you were to look at them, right? Simply because our use of fonts has come a long way. In recent times, we often opt for minimal clean fonts and prefer modern lines and curves. When it comes to creating an impressive web design, it's really important that you look to use fonts that will work well in the future too. Sticking to sans serif fonts for copy is logical because it makes for more readable content even in smaller dimensions. You’ll need to refer back to your brand guidelines to ensure that your use of fonts is consistent across channels - and that goes for font pairings too! For example, you may use one font for titles and match it with a different font for body text. Make sure details like that are maintained on every page of your website for a stronger visual identity.
Spending some time choosing your font with the future in mind is important. If your site is looking dated and you're not 100% sure why, have a closer look at the fonts you are using.
Are you showcasing testimonials?
One of the best methods of marketing is word-of-mouth. It’s valuable for several reasons - mainly, it helps to build trust in your product or service quickly. A brand can advertise its own USPs as much as it wants, but customers of the brand confirming the benefits are real is priceless. Not only does it build trust quickly, testimonials are a very low-cost area of marketing. That means that no matter what size your business is, you can collect and advertise testimonials.
People will always trust a third-party review of how great your service is more than your business saying it about themselves. If you haven't already started incorporating testimonials into the site, now is the time to do so! You could do this in the form of a banner across the site or simple blocks on the homepage, but making sure that they are visible to your new visitors is crucial. In fact, 'about 95% of customers read reviews before making a purchase.' Instead of risking new visitors leaving your site to look for reviews, give them everything they need as soon as they land on your page.
Is your site design optimised for mobile?
If you're starting on your brand journey and just looking to launch your site or you've had a long-standing website that needs a refresh, making sure that your site's design is optimised for mobile is vital.
A study from 2021 showed that more and more people are using their mobiles for browsing online, in fact, the study showed that a massive '70% of web traffic comes from mobile phones.' So if you're looking for a simple way to make sure your website is optimised for that huge audience, think mobile whilst you're designing. Here is a key checklist to ensure that your webpage design is optimised for a mobile:
1. Keep key design elements only
When you scale your web design down, you need to make sure that only key design elements remain. On a smaller screen, make sure that each part of your design serves a purpose and that you have scaled back on some of the elements included in your bigger dimensions.
2. Optimise Images
Images on your mobile site should be compressed and optimised to make sure that the page loading time is as quick as possible. You may want to use responsive images to ensure this.
3. User-friendly buttons
Remember that users need to be able to easily navigate through your mobile site, so all buttons should be touch-friendly. That means making them large enough to easily press with a finger and also far enough away from other elements on the site to make sure you don’t accidentally click on that instead.
4. Check font size
Mobile users are reading content on a much smaller scale, so you need to account for that with font size. It is generally recommended that 16pt is readable on mobile.
5. Responsive Design
Responsive design is where your site layout will change depending on the screen size of the website being viewed. For example, some content or elements might be lost when scaling down to mobile and gained again on desktop. This helps to ensure a consistently good user experience across devices.
If you answered no to any of the above questions, your site has room for improvement that could see it achieve much better conversion rates and reduce your bounce rate significantly. When it comes to successful web design, the trick really is in the smallest attention to detail. Making sure that absolutely every design element on your site is working hard to create a perfect user experience is going to mean that your site performs as best as it possibly can. Your site's design elements should be purposeful and beautiful, and if they're out of date or not optimised properly - you could be costing your business precious conversions. Professional web design is a core part of your business's success. If you'd like to hand it over to a highly experienced UK-based designer, book a demo of Design Cloud today.
