Website Design
Great website design is essential to getting traction and generating discussion around your brand. With many website designers to choose from, you can’t afford to slack on this vital component. In this post, let’s break down the essentials of what makes great website design. I will be covering everything from content curation to interactivity and even a little bit of SEO advice.
Mobile First
If you’ve done any research, on the topic of website design or web development, you have likely heard this word tossed around frequently, and with good reason. People are now using their phones as their main device for engaging with friends and family, as well as interact with brands they already enjoy. Most importantly, they use it to research new brands or have content delivered straight to them through the myriad of search engine algorithms like the ones used on Google and Facebook. Forbes even discusses the importance of adhering to Google’s requirements, “Google recommends a responsive website design pattern. Besides, it makes for a good user experience and improves your SEO efforts across all platforms.”
When it comes to mobile website design make sure the content is spaced out elegantly with responsive font sizing. This is because it will be relatively zoomed in on mobile and easy to read at a glance. Also when it comes to content development, make sure nothing is more than a few sentences. People tend to feel overwhelmed with large word counts for simple information, save the elongated information for the blog if people are curious.
SEO & Website Design
What’s the point of great website design if you can’t get any traffic to it? That’s where the whole concept of SEO, short for search engine optimization, comes in to play. Search engines have now become the gatekeepers of information online and you have to build website design around playing ball with them. Make sure you’re including relevant keywords to your content so that you will rank higher in search. Another good practice is sharing links in your content, as Google places preference on those who connect to a relative, but importantly secure, piece of content.
Interactivity
Now that you’ve set up a good mobile-first aesthetic to your website design, the next move is to add some flash, this is best achieved by adding smooth animations to your interactive content. There are three main events you can implement on your animations, those being click, hover, and scroll. If you’ve ever been to a website on your own and noticed a very elegant and smooth dropdown menu, that’s exactly the kind of memorable experience you should strive for with your own websites.
Another gorgeous effect you can add as well is scroll animations, which are relatively new in the web design sphere. This is the effect you’ve likely seen where content slides in from the left or right as you scroll to that section, usually an about or biography section, or perhaps you’ve seen the top navigation menu only appears when you scroll back up, this is all thanks to scrolling interactivity and provides a glorious experience for your users that will be eye-catching without being overwhelming.
To sum it all up, great website design starts and ends with the very users you want to impress, and hopefully convert into an audience or customers, and the more inviting you can make your personal corner of the internet, the more likely they will be to share your site and brand as well. For more information on digital marketing, contact us