Web design principles

What does web design mean? Design does not mean making things that look good on the outside. That falls under art. Someone who creates web pages that look good, whether they work or not, is not a web designer but an artist, or at most a Graphic Designer. However,  I want you to see design as the creation of a new solution to a problem. This often means creating an experience for people, whether it’s a lecture, a dinner menu, a ceremony, a sales pitch, a perfume, or a brochure.

Unlike art, design always has a purpose. In web design, you always have goals to achieve. An E-commerce site is all about the number of sales. A marketing site is looking for new leads (potential customers) or to pass on a specific message to its visitors. A web-based application should enable people to perform specific tasks. For example, a calendar application that helps you remember preconceived plans.

The goals that you set, define the problem you need to solve. The design is the process you follow to arrive at the best possible solution. So web design does not start graphically. It starts with understanding the challenge. Who am I communicating to? What do they want? How can I attract them? And finally, how can I ensure that the visitors take action on which the site wants them to take action.

A professional web design is often one of the first points of contact with the brand. This is because nowadays people start the search for a company online. For this reason, it is extra important to make your web design look as professional as possible. Your website must exude confidence and convey a professional identity to the visitor. You should think of the coherence of typography, the colors of the house style, the logo, the company’s message, the tone in which this message is conveyed, etc.

In addition to the cohesion of various components, a web design has a number of important goals, namely:

• As described above, clearly conveying the company’s message to its customers in order to connect the company and customer in this way. (For company and visitors)
• It needs a clear structure, also known as easy navigation through the pages, visitors must be able to find what they are looking for easily. (For the visitors)
• Create trust with your customers, a modern-looking design helps to inspire trust. (For the visitors)
• A call-to-action, as soon as a visitor comes to the website you want to gather information or you want to provide information. This is often done through a call to action. For example, it is essential to collect contact details in order to stay in touch with your potential customer. By means of the call-to-action on the website, it should encourage the visitor to fill in his contact details on your website.

Furthermore, things like, what do your visitors experience with the design? And is your website user-friendly? Or what emotions does your house style evoke in people? All important aspects when addressing your target group. The better your website responds to your target group, the easier it is for you to convert potential customers into paying customers. All this has to do with ease of use.

For the best result of your web design, the business goals should be taken into account. The business goals must then match the needs of the customer. A combination of these two factors is essential for the success of your web design. That is why it is important to create customer profiles prior to web design. While creating your customer profiles, you give a profile to the visitor or potential customer.

Eventually, you want to use the customer profiles as a benchmark for the layout of the page. This way it’s easy to constantly look back at the customer profile. So you can try to imagine if this customer could act in this way of thinking. What should the visitor be able to do on the web page, or what actions should he/she be able to perform? Also referred to as user stories in technical terms. What information would you like to provide the visitor as soon as he/she lands on the website? You create different stories based on what a visitor can do in a given time. You can then meet that user with the features they need to implement on the website to achieve their goals.

It is therefore important that the website is well-arranged and that the visitor can easily navigate through the pages. As a visitor to an E-commerce site, for example, do I want to be able to quickly see what the product is and what the product can do for me? If this is not clear at a glance on the homepage, it will not result in many sales. It is therefore important to include the most important pages in the navigation menu and that every page connects and is well linked. This way you keep the website well-organized, but what else do you need? Below are a few tips to keep your website organized:

• Clear typography and copywriting.
• Grid of the page (also called grid pattern or grid).
• The use of color.
• A menu from which it is easy to determine where the user can find what.
• No unnecessary animations.
• Use white space (space around the content).

As described above, it is important to properly map out your target group before you start creating a web design. Although the website should appeal to you, it is more important that the website appeals to your target group. Questions like, what is your target audience looking for? And can you solve the problem of your target group with your service or product? These are questions that respond to the buying behavior of your visitors or potential customers. Is what you offer the solution to their needs?

A man who goes to a hardware store to buy a drill doesn’t need a drill – he needs the hole in the wall.

Prior to the process of making a web design, there are a number of things that you must first have in order. Because you are going to make the web design for your site visitors and want to provide them with ease of use, it is important to sketch a user of the site.

While sketching your user for your web design, you look at several points such as:

• The age of the target audience
• What challenges do they have
• Where is the target group located?
• What needs do they have?
• What solutions are they looking for?

Furthermore, prior to building the website pages, you want to tackle as many concerns of your visitors as possible. As soon as your visitor comes to the website, he will be able to ask himself three things, namely:

1. Is this something for me?
2. Does this service or product work?
3. What is it exactly?

To appeal to potential customers, the architecture of your web design must be designed in such a way that objections are removed. If your homepage does not answer these questions, the visitor will never be able to fully identify with your website, at the expense of new leads.

One way to answer these questions is to classify your web design architecture as follows:

• In the Hero section, in the hero, the interest of the visitor is aroused. In this, you briefly tell your value proposition, what is it that the visitor needs? Or what is the challenge the user faces? (Note this is not about you!)
• Just below the Hero section, you could introduce the user’s first thought, is this for me? Also called qualification. Here you select who the target group is. For example, a social media advertising company will put here, “Having trouble creating ads that are recognizable, is there a better way?”
• The first consideration of the visitor will be followed by the second consideration, in which you could describe whether your service works. To come back to the example of the Social Media company, they could possibly incorporate Social proof in this. To create extra confidence in the visitor that the service works.
• Until you answer the question of what exactly it is that you do. ”We help companies come up with awesome advertisements in which people recognize themselves through…”
• Finally, you would like to collect contact details from your visitors, so that you can approach these visitors again and again based on their initial interest in your service. Make sure this is not hidden on your website!

Incidentally, this will not always be the order that people adhere to, but in general, the homepage is structured in this way. The reason why so many companies do the same? Because it is a formula that has been proven. The content will be different for every company, but the structure is often the same.

‘’You can’t design experiences, but you can design for them.’’

Dan Makoski
VP OF DESIGN AT WALMART. ‘’QUOTE’’

As of August 2022, mobile traffic to websites is over 59% versus a measly 38% for desktop users according to statistics. Making a modern mobile web design is therefore extremely important!

Consumers spend more time on the telephone, the business market will spend more time behind the laptop.

But responsive web design is no longer just about making an interface look good on both desktop and mobile devices. With responsive web design, there are now plenty of opportunities to create customized user experiences based on personalized user preferences.

This is also referred to as the ”new responsive design”. It includes responding to the user, with questions and terms of user preferences. Such as, for example:

• Dark mode, where a light web page can be switched to a dark web page with one button. (Did you know you can save 11% of battery usage at an average brightness of 60%!)
• Reduced movements, for example as a user you could turn off the animations of the web page.
• Capitalizing on new form factors such as foldable devices that enable multi-display functionality. (IMAGE)
• And reacting blocks on the website that are in proportion to other components. (ANIMATION)