With a billion websites present online, landing on your page, requires nothing short of hard work. You have to ensure your site’s configuration is advanced for ease of use and client experience. You can spend years concentrating on the ins and outs of ease of use and UX, but we will work on creating accompanying rundown of accommodating rules to apply to your next web plan venture.

Seven Website Design Guidelines for an Exceptional User Experience:

Simplicity

While concentrating on the sleek design to develop a website which has a look and feel, most visitors aren’t coming to your site to check out the design. They are here to complete an action or to find out some information regarding the product and services provided by the company.

Adding design elements which have no functional purpose to your website will only make it harder for visitors to accomplish what they’re trying to accomplish.

From an experience and UX design perspective, simplicity is your friend, and you can employ certain strategies to create simplicity in a variety of different ways.

Here are some examples:

• Colors: Do not use too many colors in the website, certain sources recommends using a maximum of five different colors in your website’s design.

• Typefaces: Choose a simple, easy-to-read typeface and font for your content.

• Graphics: Use graphics and media to inform your customers, not to fill up white space on your website.

• Whitespace: Include plenty of white spaces to improve readability.

Visual Hierarchy

Tied to the idea of simplicity, this involves the arrangement and organization of elements so that visitors naturally gravitate to the main element first.

Structure elements of your website should be ordered logically, according to their function and importance – which is known as “visual hierarchy”. Establish a visual hierarchy by positioning important elements near the top of the page. Important elements should feature bold colors or fonts in order to stand out against the rest of the page.

When it comes to usability and UX, it is important that you make the call to action to complete an action seem as enjoyable and natural as possible. By adjusting the position, color or size of certain elements, you can structure your site in such a way that visitors will be drawn to those elements first.

In the case of Spotify, we have the “Get Spotify Free” call-to-action sits atop the visual hierarchy. It is located at the left side of the page as most people scan website from left to right, and its the only element above the fold that uses that dark purple color, which naturally draws your attention.

Navigability

Intuitive navigation on your site is crucial for ensuring visitors can find what they’re looking for. Ideally, a visitor should be able to arrive on your site and not have to think extensively about where they should click next, they should be able to move from point A to point B without thinking too much.

Here are a few tips for optimizing your site’s navigation:

• Keep the structure of your primary navigation simple and near the top of your page

• Include navigation in the footer of your site

• Use breadcrumbs on every page so people are aware of their navigation trail

• Include a search bar at the top so your users can search using keywords

• Don’t offer to many navigation options on a page

• Make sure that your navigation is not more than 3 levels deep

• Include links within your page copy, and make it clear where those links lead to.

Ensure your website’s navigation is consistent across all pages. The location of your navigation links and the labels for each link should remain the same throughout your website.

Consistency

Along with all your links being similar throughout every webpage, your look and feel of the website should be consistent through all platforms.

Backgrounds, color schemes, typefaces and even the tone of your writing are all areas where being consistent can have a positive impact on usability and UX.

You should create separate layout for different types of pages on yours site (e.g. a layout for landing pages, a layout for informational pages, etc.), and by using those layouts consistently, you’ll make it easier for visitors to understand what type of information they’re likely to find on a given page.

Accessibility

The number of mobile users is overtaking desktop users at an ever-increasing rate. As such, it’s important to enhance your website for both desktop and mobile experience. By implementing responsive design, your website will work smoothly on almost any device including, smartphones, tablets, desktops, netbooks and ebooks.

Tablet internet consumption grew 30% between 2013 and 2015. Smartphone internet consumption meanwhile grew 78% during the same time period. In order to provide a truly great user experience, your site needs to be compatible with the different devices that your visitors are using.

This means at a high level, investing in a website structure that is highly flexible- like responsive design. With a responsive site, content is automatically resized and reshuffled to fit the dimensions of whichever device a visitor happens to be using.

At a lower level, improving accessibility can be as simple as adding alt-text to all your images. It’s more important that your website provides a great experience across different platforms as opposed to having to it look identical across those platforms. That can mean adhering to platform-specific design conventions instead of trying to squeeze in unique elements that users of that platform might not be familiar with.

Conventionality

Most webpages follow a basic design formula which online visitors have come to expect. The logo is usually located at the top of the page, followed by major navigation links, then important content. Contact information can be found in the footer.

To put these with more explaination:

• Having the main navigation be at the top of a page

• Having a logo at the top left of a page

• Having that logo be clickable so is always brings a visitor back to the homepage

• Having links change color/ appearance when you hover over them

While it may seem tempting to throw all such design conventions out the window for the sake of being completely original or unique, this would be a mistake. It would be similar to putting a car’s steering wheel in the backseat.

In order to provide the best experience possible for your site’s visitors, take advantage of the fact that you already know what types of web experiences they’re familiar with. This would make your site easier for visitors to navigate.

When a user visits your website, they will decide to stay or leave within several seconds. Improve your conversion rate by delivering an exceptional user experience, and implement your ideas into your own user interface.

Credibility

Using web design conventions – design elements and strategies that visitors are already familiar with, can help give your site more credibility. If you’re striving to build a site that provides the best user experience, credibility can go a long way.

The best way to build credibility of your website is to provide clear and honest information about your product/service you’re selling on the site. Don’t make visitors have to dig through dozens of pages to find out what it is you actually do. Be up front about it, and dedicate some real estate to explaining the value behind what you do.

Have a pricing page. While it can be tempting to force people to contact you in order for them to learn more about pricing, having prices listed clearly on your site can definitely make your business seem more trustworthy and legitimate.