Three Website Design Elements Proven to Increase User Experience

When you are tasked with designing a custom website, ensuring that you have a strong User Interface is crucial. Users come to websites wanting to be wowed and informed which is part of a positive experience that would ideally keep them coming back as return users. User Interface or UI, refers to everything on the site that the user can touch and see; menu options buttons, text and navigation. UI is the graphics and information aspect of the website where UX is more the analytic and technical side. As times change and websites become more dynamic, the UI sets the stage and creates the User Experience or UX. Today, designers spend countless hours and tireless effort trying to design a website with fluidity to and from pages integrated with immediacy, control and convenience throughout the website’s entirety. The three most important website design elements to incorporate when building a website are responsiveness, usability and physical appeal.

Responsiveness
In the world we live in today, people are constantly on the go and the need for instant gratification and convenience are at an all time high. If people wish to learn about a product or business at that very moment, they expect to be able to hop on their mobile device and investigate the internet or website with all the information they need. With that being the reality, creating a responsive website is essential. Google analytics have shown that since the dependence on mobile devices has increased, web searches have fallen behind the number of mobile online searches since the internet was first introduced. Therefore, we suggest that when creating a website, a primary goal should be ensuring that the website is responsive for the convenience of users. Responsive design not only pleases users but is helpful in regards to having an effective Search Engine Optimization. It is also worth noting that many responsive websites tend to look similar in design according to users. Although it is nice to be original and everyone wants to have the “latest and greatest” design, having a similar look isn’t necessarily a bad thing. If it works, run with it. Be proud of success.

Usability
Creating a website that has all of the aesthetics of being complex but simple in navigation and readability is the perfect combination to ensure user satisfaction. As fun as it may be to throw all of the bells and whistles into creating a website, sometimes simple is smarter. Building website that is too difficult for the user can leave them feeling turned off and not wanting to investigate your website further. When you’re building a website, especially if it for someone else, it is crucial to get an idea of the direction you wish to go in that will ensure users want to come to, stay on and come back to the website. Providing provocative and intriguing content is also a plus. When you, as a designer, are able to put content onto a website that makes the user want to ask questions and dig deeper into a website, you have scored a major win.

Physical Appearance
When you’re creating a website, having eye-popping images, video footage and an array of soft and bold color palettes are some of the ways you can come off as eye pleasing to your users. But not only do you want the website to look good, you want it to evoke emotion, entertain them and make them want to be recurring visitors. As “flat design” has taken the world by storm in the last few years, trends come and go. The original flat designs were hard to navigate as it was difficult to differentiate what was clickable and what was not. Now that “flat design 2.0” has been introduced after some of the 3D effects proved to be too excessive with the original flat design, the technique has seen some strong results with the new direction (see Santa Tracker for the subtleties of 2.0). The new flat design has done wonders to improve the user experience. This type of design, first used by Apple and Microsoft, is content focused, adaptable and sleek. It allows for a heavy focus on graphics, pictures, and videos, which is more appealing to users than lengthy word-based content.

A popular image trend is including something called “hero images”. These images play on the strongest human sense; vision. They are emotionally evoking and grab user’s attention. Adding the inclusion of motion animations, galleries, slideshows and hover animations also plays a part in creating a website that pleasing to the user’s eye. Another trend that is becoming increasingly popular on landing pages of websites is video footage. Designers are beginning to incorporate video footage that rolls in the background of a homepage. This footage grabs the user’s attention and increases interest in the website. Finally, using the right typography is beneficial to the user experience. Using fonts like Times New Roman or Arial have proved to be most effective when building a new website.

It is very important to pay attention to these three key aspects of design and use UX design to meet the needs of your users. If you would like to improve the design of your website, contact a Stellar Blue representative today!