Excellent web design is an essential portion of starting off on the web. For this reason is very important you have a top guide to web design your all pages on site. But design isn’t only graphics and colors, you have to take in consideration some topics like menus, user flows and others that offer a good user experience to your visitors.

On this article you will know how you should design and develop a strong structure to your website. How many topics implies a best design and how to apply these on your work. Lets go!

Guidelines for Excellent Web Design for Dummies

All of tips in these guidelines have to fulfill a responsive technology, web design have to show an excellent experience to visitors from a desktop, tablet and mobile. Unless you want to design separately for these sizes, the ideal is that your website is prepared for a rearrangement of the elements in each of the screen sizes that these devices have.

Web Design for Dummies Considerations for Mobiles

Day by Day, mobile device internet users grow. At this time, almost 50% of users access the web from mobile devices around the world. It is a reason to start this article explaining the things you need to use for satisfy the visitors from a device mobile consult your website.

What does this mean for a web designers? It means that we must have a mobile strategy for every website you design.

Ideal for Responsive design

It’s essential to optimize your website for various screens and resolutions. Here are some key guidelines to follow:

• Choose a single column web design, a single-column layout usually works best on mobile screens.
• Use the “Priority+” pattern to prioritize navigation across breakpoints. Priority+ exposes the most important elements from your website and hides away less important items behind a “more” button.
• Define appropriately size images for displays and platforms.

From Clickable to Tappable

On the mobile web, finger taps (not mouse clicks) create interactions. This means that different rules apply when you’re designing touch targets and interactions.

• Properly sized touch targets. All interactive elements (such as links, buttons, and menus) should be tappable and a bit larger.
• Stronger visual signifiers of interactivity. On mobile, there is no hover state to provide additional visual feedback to your user.

Starting the Design for Dummies Process

After review the importance of responsive design for current users of internet. Us will start to define the main elements to consider within contemporary web design and the basic clues to accomplish the success on your internet adventure on your website.

How to Design individual pages?

Now that we’ve reviewed the basics of user flow, it’s time to learn how to design the individual web pages. Below we’ve summarized the key website designing guidelines to know.

Tips for develop a good Content strategy

When it comes to web page design, the most important thing is to design around the page’s objectives. Content strategy—which refers to planning, creating, and managing content on your website—will help with this exercise. Each page has its own goal, such as informing visitors about something or encouraging them to convert. Once you understand the goal of the page, only then should you work on the design or write the content.

Here are a few practical tips as you consider your content strategy:

• Prevent information overload. Yes, too much information on a page can easily overwhelm visitors.
• Avoid jargon and industry-specific terms. 
• Minimize long sentences. Write in small, scannable segments. not more 20 words by sentence.
• Avoid capitalizing all letters. All-caps text is fine for acronyms and logos.

Build a good Page structure

A properly structured page will help visitors find each user interface element. While there are no one-size-fits-all rules, there are a few website design guidelines that will help you create a solid structure:

• Make your page structure predictable to visitors. 
• Use a layout grid to design the page. A good layout grid divides a web page into major regions and defines the relationships between elements in terms of size and position.
• Use a low-fidelity wireframe to privatize essential elements. 

Design with Visual hierarchy

People are more likely to quickly scan a web page than to read everything there. Therefore, it’s a good idea to optimize your web page design for fast scanning.

You can help visitors find what they need with a good visual hierarchy, which refers to the arrangement or presentation of elements on a web page in a way that indicates their importance (that is, where their eyes should focus first, second, etc.). Good visual hierarchy can significantly improve page scannability.

• Use natural scanning patterns. 
• Visually prioritize important elements. Make important elements, such as key content or your primary call-to-action buttons, the focal points so that visitors see them right away.
• Create mockups to clarify the visual hierarchy. Mockups are high-fidelity design artifacts that enable designers to see what the final layout will look like.

Scrolling behavior

A persistent myth among web designers is that people don’t scroll. To be clear: everybody scrolls, and people start to scroll almost instantly as they land on a new page.

Knowing this, you can improve the user’s experience with these tips:

• Encourage users to scroll. Despite the fact that people usually start scrolling as soon as the page loads, content at the top of the page is still very important. Put your most compelling content at the top:
  • Make a good introduction. 
  • Engaging with good imagery. 
• Orient your Users, especially when you create lengthy pages, keep in mind that visitors still require a sense of orientation.
• Provide visual feedback when loading new content. 
• Don’t hijack scrolling. Many users hate this situation.

Imagery

As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. Human beings are highly visual creatures and images are a powerful way to capture the user’s attention. A single image can convey more to the viewer than an elaborately designed block of text. Furthermore, images cross language barriers in a way that text simply can’t.

The following principles will help you integrate imagery into your web page design:

• Make sure images are relevant. 
• Avoid generic photos of people. 
• Use high-quality assets with no distortion. 

Content loading

While an instant response is best, there are occasions when your website will need more time to deliver content to visitors. A bad Internet connection could cause a slow reaction, or an operation itself could take a bit more time to complete. But no matter the cause of such behavior, your website should appear fast and responsive. Here are some ways to achieve this:

• Make sure regular loading doesn’t take long. 
• Use skeleton screens during loading. 

Skeleton screens are an excellent alternative to this. These containers are essentially a temporarily blank version of the page, into which information is gradually loaded. Rather than showing a loading indicator, designers can use a skeleton screen to focus users’ attention on actual progress and create anticipation for what’s to come. Because information is incrementally displayed on the screen, it feels like things are happening immediately.

Buttons

Buttons are interactive UI elements that play a key role in conversational flow. It’s worth paying attention to these basic best practices for buttons:

• Ensure that clickable elements actually look clickable. 
• Label buttons according to what they do. 
• Design buttons consistently. 

Videos

Videos are more popular than ever, due increasing Internet speeds, it is possible to watch long videos right now. It totally good, especially considering that they extend the time spent on site. Today, video is everywhere. We’re watching it on our desktops, tablets, and phones. When used effectively, video is one of the most powerful tools available for engaging an audience — it conveys more emotion and really gives people a feel for a product or service.

If you want to use video on your website, consider the following recommendations:

• Set audio to “off” by default, with the option to turn it on. 
• Keep promo videos as short as possible. 
• Provide an alternative way to access content. 

Call-to-action buttons (CTAs)

Calls-to-action (CTAs) are buttons that guide users toward your conversion goal. The whole point of a CTA design is to direct visitors to a specific action. Some common examples of CTAs are:

• “Start a trial”
• “Download the book”
• “Sign up for updates”
• “Get a consultation”

Some tips into account when designing CTA buttons

• Size of CTA buttons to attract attention. 
• Visual prominence of Button. 
• Negative space to get more attention from visitor. 
• Use Labels to action-oriented for CTA.

Very important Tip: 

Use a “blur test” to test your CTA. A blur test is a quick technique to determine whether the user’s eye will go where you want it to go.

Design the Web forms

Filling out forms is one of the most important types of interaction for users on the web. Users should be able to complete forms quickly and without confusion.

Here are a few design recommendations that will help you improve your form design:

• Ask only what’s required. Every extra field you add to a form will affect its conversion rate. The more you ask, the less motivated users will be to provide the data. Always think about why you’re requesting certain information from users and how you will be using it.
• Order the form logically. For example, asking for someone’s address before their name might seem strange.
• Group related fields together. Grouping creates a flow from one set of questions to the next. Grouping related fields together also helps the user make sense of the information.

Designing the user flows

The first thing to consider is your user flow, or the path by which the visitor will navigate through your website. After all, web page design isn’t about creating a collection of individual pages; it’s about creating flows. This path is a series of steps that the visitor takes from the entry point (the first page where they land) toward the specific action you want them to take (typically a conversion action, such as a sign-up, purchase, etc.). The following will help you determine your user flows as you design your website.

Information architecture

The Information architecture (IA) is a professional area that allows you to manage the order of information on clearly way, using a logical flow. It let your visitors check your web site more comfortable and feel good. These professionals (Information architects) will analyze how users structure information should go and create a hierarchy that aligns with the user’s expectations.

The most important thing and prime accomplishment of IA is used to define the site’s navigation and menus. To test these menus, need to use a technique called “tree testing” to prove the good functioning and that it will work. Tree testing happens before designing the final interface.

How to Design Global navigation?

This is an important topic for your web design. If your web design can’t navigate for your visitors, they will probably unlike your website and leave it. The navigation on your website should follow to a few important principles:

• Consistency. Develop a standard for your structure navigation system, it must be the same for all pages on your web design.
• Simplicity. The simple way to introduce your web site, will help your visitors understand better your matters and will obtain that’s they looking for with the fewest clicks possible.
• Clarity. Clearly present the navigation options so that your visitors can access them easily.

Some Tips to design web navigation from your Website

When you start to design web navigation, please consider just a few things on your all pages:

• Select a navigation pattern based on the user’s needs. 
• Prioritize navigation options. 
• Make always navigation visible. 
• Communicate the current location using breadcrumbs. 

Establish a Consistent Layout for the Web Links

Links are a key element in web navigation. Their visual and functional design has a direct impact on usability. Follow a few rules with these interactive elements:

• Double-check all links to avoid 404-error page.
• Change the color of visited links. 
• Recognize the difference between internal and external links. 

Breadcrumbs

Breadcrumbs are a set of contextual links that function as a navigation aid on websites. It’s a secondary navigation scheme that usually shows the user’s location on a website. A important thing is separate each level clearly. Yes , use arrowheads as separators, not slashes.

Put a “Back” button on top

Avoid events in which clicking “back” brings the users to the top of the initial page, especially on long pages. Put back button on correct place or, let to user to click on the back button browser.

Losing their spot forces the users to scroll through content they have already seen, which make loose more time to users and leads to unnecessary cost.

Search Terms on your Website

Current visitors come to a website looking for a specific item. If your website have the “Search” feature, they will use it and it act as a shortcut in this case. Take in consideration these few rules when designing the search box:

• It is better use a magnifying glass icon to draw attention to the area. 
• Design the size of the input box appropriately. 
• Put the search box on every page. 
• Put the search box where users expect to find it. 

Make a Web Design for Dummies Accessibility

Accessibility is another essential website design guideline. Today’s products must be accessible to everyone, regardless of a person’s abilities. Designing for users with impairments should be an integral part of product design.

Keyboard-friendly experience

Some users, in special as those with motor impairments, navigate the internet using their keyboard. To cater and help to this group, it’s very important to enable keyboard-based navigation.

Some rules for keyboard navigation that you could take in consideration:

• All interactive elements should be accessible.
• Check that keyboard focus is visible and obvious.  

Check this link for keyboard interaction: “Design Patterns and Widgets” section of the W3C’s “WAI-ARIA Authoring Practices” document. It will open your eyes on this matter.

Blind users

Blind people use assistive technologies, such as screen readers, to interpret websites. Screen readers “read” images using the alternative text attributed to the image and description from it. If you don’t write that text, they won’t be able to get the information as intended.

When you are creating text alternatives and description for images, put in consideration these tips:

• A text alternative isn’t needed on only decorative image.
• All “meaningful” images require descriptive alternative text.

Design Users with poor eyesight

A lot of websites use low contrast for text copy. While gray text on a white background may look cool, it is also illegible and inaccessible. Low contrast is especially problematic for users with low vision and those who struggle with contrast sensitivity.

Low-contrast text is hard to read on a desktop, but it becomes even more difficult on mobile. Imagine trying to read low-contrast text on a mobile device while walking in bright sunlight.

The W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) includes a contrast-ratio recommendation. They recommend this contrast ratios for body web pages:

Test the contrast from your page with WebAIM’s Color Contrast Checker and get the optimal range of contrast.

Color blind and low-vision users

It’s estimated that 4.5% of the global population experience color blindness (that’s 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women), 4% suffer from low vision (1 in 30 people), and 0.6% are blind (1 in 188 people).

To make design accessible for these users, avoid using color alone to convey meaning. As the W3C states, color shouldn’t be used “as the only visual means of conveying information, indicating an action, prompting a response, or distinguishing a visual element.”

In the form above, the designer should give more specific instructions, such as: “The email address you entered is not valid,” or at least display an icon near the field that requires attention.

Testing your Web Design at last

Finally, your work is almost finish. You are get an accomplishment: have designed all of your website using all of techniques explain above. Now, one of important thing for you are make a test of speed of your website.

I know, even if you’ve used all of the website design guidelines above, it doesn’t mean that it will work for your users. A good strategy of thumb is “make test early and make test often” to know if you web design will work good.

Iterative testing

Like any other part of the design cycle, testing is an iterative process. Gather feedback early on in the design process and iterate throughout.

Test page loading time

Users hate slow-loading web pages. That’s why response time is a critical factor for modern websites. According to Nielsen Norman Group, there are three response-time limits:

• Upload in 0.1 second. This feels instant for users.
• Your page upload in 1 second. The user will sense a slight delay.
• Too much time, over 10 seconds. Users may leave the website immediately.

Obviously, we shouldn’t make users wait 10 seconds for anything on our websites. But even a few seconds of delay can make an experience unpleasant.

What usually causes slow loading time?

There are many reasons to reduce the website speed, here some things that could be affecting the web performance:

• Heavy content objects (such as embedded video and slideshow widgets)
• Unoptimized back-end code
• Hardware-related issues (infrastructure that doesn’t allow for fast operations).

To check the speed’s pages, just use this tool:  PageSpeed Insights from Google. I am sure it will help you find the causes. Others testing pages that can help to improve your speed website are: GTmetrix, WebPagetest, YSlow, Pingdom.

Make a A/B testing

An A/B test is ideal when you’re struggling to choose between two versions of a design. This testing method consists of showing one of two versions randomly to an equal number of users and then reviewing analytics to see which version accomplished your goal more effectively.

Web Design handoff

The UX design process has two important steps: prototyping the design and developing a working solution. The “handoff” is the step that connects the two.

As soon as the design is ready for development, designers prepare a specification, which is a document that describes how to code the design. A specification ensures that the team implements the design according to the original intention.

A good specification is critical because without it, the developers will have to either rely on guesswork when building the website or go back to the designer to get answers to their questions. But assembling a specification manually can be a headache and usually takes significant time, depending on the complexity of the design.

Conclusions

• Of course, these web design tips are just a start. Mix and match these ideas with your own for the best results. Treat your website as a continually evolving project and use analytics and user feedback to constantly improve the experience.
• One important thing that you have present all the time: the web design isn’t just for designers, it is thought for users.
• Web designer has to provide exclusive attention to usability of the website so that visitors could find the proper information easily. Responsive web designers think that their customers’ web pages ought to be accessible to each visitor, giving them an optimal experience, irrespective of the device they using.
• The plan is sustainable thus you can shell out a little more on that. To be certain your web design is ideal and in harmony with target audience.
• Web design encompasses many unique abilities and disciplines in the manufacturing and maintenance of sites. Web Design Complete Business Platform Understanding the practice of development of a service or product is vital as it aids in realizing its importance and advantages.
• There are lots of steps involved if you need to design an extremely proper web website. If you would like to have an ideal web site which is suitable for your purpose, you must be really careful about its design.
• Web designing must be completed in the right way in order for your company receives a new and refreshing appearance.
• The plan of a website or user interface shouldn’t ever interfere with the user’s capacity to consume the content on the website.
• The Guied for website design for dummies is an incredible tool to solve the problems of design and let you to arribe more easily to the succeed.

Let me show you a video tutorial named “A Beginner’s Web Design Tutorial for 2018 – Part 1 of 2“, from the channel DesignCourse, Youtube.com

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