When people talk about great web design, they usually think that a blessed creative individual is the reason why a website is doing great and yours isn’t. You might be thinking something like “if I had a professional and talented designer on my team, I’d have a great website as well!”. Well, you wouldn’t be wrong, but if you think that you need to be a talented designer to create an amazing website—you’re in for a surprise.
Web design has some deep dark secrets that many professionals don’t want you to know simply because it will eat at their potential revenue. There are some surprisingly simple ways to increase your web traffic and it’s not based on your creativity and experience. There are some basic web design principles that every website needs to adhere to and a large majority of websites on the internet don’t follow them. As long as you follow these simple rules, your website will get a massive boost in web traffic and the overall experience for your viewers will improve tenfold.
- Have a purpose
Your website needs to have a reason for existing. Is it a personal blog, is it a business storefront, or are you working on building an online presence for your company? You have to get into the mindset that you aren’t creating your website for yourself. Instead, you’re providing a service to the viewers and readers that you are targeting your website towards. Let this purpose dictate what type of content your website will contain.
- Original content
Don’t steal content. Unless you want to be flagged by Google and other search engines for plagiarism and be put on a blacklist, then you’d be wise to create your own original content instead of copying other people’s work. This is one of the most basic SEO principles. Focus on quality over quantity if you are running a blog or something similar.
- Optimisation
Make sure that your website can be viewed properly on mobile devices in addition to your desktop browser. A large majority of internet users access the internet through mobile devices with small screens that can’t display everything. You also need to make sure that your load times are smooth and it doesn’t take forever to load up a new page. Think back to point #1; you’re not designing a website for yourself—it’s for your users, so make sure the user experience is fluid and bug-free.
- Clean design
It doesn’t matter if your website is a simple personal blog or a corporate website—it has to be clean and simple. Don’t use silly clashing colours, don’t use a dozen different fonts and don’t chuck adverts all over your website in an attempt to get ad revenue. Create a website that you would personally be happy about using, not something that you despise.
- Don’t forget images
Images have multiple uses on a website. They are used to break up text, illustrate a point, accompany some text or even sell a product to the user. A single picture is capable of telling a story if you give it some accompanying text, so make sure you chose proper images to go with your content.