There are certain crucial components that every web design should have. These basic elements make the users decide if they must continue to look at the website or move ahead. This means that your web site design should adhere to the basic principles and elements of a web design. There are six important elements that every website should follow and they are listed below.
- Visual Appearance and Layout
The grid-based design keeps the content aligned organized and accessible. The design should be less cluttered, clean and intuitive. There must be plenty of white breathing space in each page of a website. Icons, images, graphics and photography must complement each other and should be able to provide supplement information to text. The website must have a visual hierarchy that must represent the brand. You can follow E Pattern or Z pattern while designing your webpage contents. They emphasize the horizontal area of the website. The brand logo, navigation and search box are placed on top for better user interaction and brand recognition.
- Colour Scheme
The colour palette is very important for a website and has a huge impact of readability and user experience. The designer needs to pay attention to the brand while designing the entire website. The target audience demography should also be considered while designing a website. The readers expectation must also be considered. Bright primary colours for kids, bold colours for teenagers and grown ups and refined colors for elders are to be taken care of. Use a dominant color and a complimentary color to bring out the life in a website.
- Typography
Fonts or Typography is an important element to communicate message to your audience. Sans serif fonts are best suited for website for its easy readability. The body copy should be of size 16px at least. Go for not more than three fonts in a website. Provide ample contrast between the font and the background to make it readable friendly.
- Navigation
Navigation can exist in the website header, body or footer depending on the purpose. The hamburger or three lines menu type is user friendly. The footer navigation menu should not be ignored. Horizontal main menu at the top of each page is every user friendly over drop down vertical menu that were placed on the left of the website in the older web design.
- Content
Potential customers look for the content of a website. Content is the primary selling point of your web site design. Use heading and subheadings to categorize your content and get the short span attention effectively. Avoid long gambling sentences and keep it simple and crispy to deliver the message to the viewers.
- Responsiveness
The website has to be designed to suite all sleek and handy mobile devices as well. Mobile friendly website has become a great necessity nowadays with the increasing usage of mobiles and tablets to view websites.
