5 web basics to know before designing a website
Written by ASHLEY peterson-deluca
You’ve used a bad website before.
It takes forever to load. You can’t find what you’re looking for. The text blurs as you try to read it.
You can avoid these mistakes by going back to the basics of web design. Whether you’re revamping your decade-old website or starting from scratch, ask yourself these five questions:
who are my audiences?
That is, who is going to visit your website? Before you create the first wireframe or heading, list all the types of people who you want to visit your website and what you know about them. That will let you tailor your site to meet their needs.
In fact, when undertaking a massive effort to revamp all their sites, the U.S. federal government – notorious for difficult-to-use sites in the past – said their first step was to start with real user needs.
2. what do i need my website to do?
Sometimes called “specs” or “requirements list,” what you need to do is much simpler than all the jargon. Before you do anything else, decide what actions you need the website to perform.
Some common actions are:
To sell a product.
To drive newsletter signups.
To encourage audiences to donate money.
To help your audience schedule a meeting with you.
This will let you choose the right technologies to build your website. It’s so much easier to build in functionality from the beginning. And we can’t forget that a strong Call to Action is critical in helping your audiences support your work.
3. what’s the purpose of my homepage?
For just about every website, the homepage is the most visited page, making it the most important page to get right.
Because your homepage is like a virtual front door to the rest of the site, make sure your content and design act like a doorman.
An effective homepage clearly answers:
Who you are.
What you do.
What the visitor can do here.
When you combine this with understanding your audiences, you can then begin to write content that resonates with them and design a page that will get them where they need to go.
4. am i keeping it simple?
Making your website more complicated leads to a host of problems.
Keep the design simple. If you have dozens of animations, and videos, and a carousel of photos, then it can make the site take longer to load. People won’t wait for it to load and will just click away. Research shows that not only do more users stay on fast-loading sites, but they also convert at higher rates.
Keep the Call to Action simple. On each page, ask people to do only one thing. And make that very clear visually.
Keep the language simple. There’s quite a few tricks you can use to keep your language simple and easy to read. My colleague Niki advises how to write clearly in just a few steps!
5. am i making my site accessible to everyone?
Making your content accessible to people with hearing or visual impairments has never been easier, especially if you think about accessibility at the beginning of a project. I’ve recently shared a few easy ways to make your digital communications more accessible.
P.S. Need a partner to help you through the challenge of launching a new or refreshed website? It’s one of the Digital and Social Media Marketing services we offer.
