‘You shouldn’t judge a book by its cover’ is an adage that updates readily to the web age. People visit websites to buy products and services, gather information or interact with others over social media channels. Very seldom do people pay specific attention to the design of a website, except in two circumstances:
Exceptional Website Design
If you’ve created a really original, innovative or unusual website design you should find that it captures people’s attention. This may be advantageous, if they share their discovery with others over established sharing channels, such as Delicious, Face Book or Stumble Upon. However, such activity may increase website visits and interest, without impacting on the bottom line. There may simply be no crossover between those who are interested in the aesthetics of your website design and those who are potential customers for the goods or services that your website offers.
Exceptionally Bad Website Design
At the other extreme, there are websites that make your eyes bleed, leave you feeling that everything is falling to pieces around your ears or navigate you up blind alleys with no means of escape. Any of these failings spell death to a commercial website. Visitors will decide subconsciously within seconds of arriving whether they trust your website. If your website fails the initial ‘trust test’, it’s almost impossible to turn things around and convert these sceptics into customers.
So what are the essential design elements to consider if you’re going to create an acceptable, credible website?
Colour Restraint
In the early days of the web, designers were restricted to 256 ‘web-safe’ HTML colours, which could be rendered reliably by the web browsers and monitors of the time. Improvement in browser and monitor technology means web designers now have access to the full 16 million plus colours of the hexadecimal system, but invariably less is more. Restrict your colour use to a clearly defined palate of colours that compliment each other. Creating a colour chart for your website with text, link, visited, background and accent colours can help rein in a tendency to overcomplicate your website’s colour scheme.
Simplicity and Consistency of Design
A website doesn’t need to be complicated to be effective. Make sure that the information that is important to users is prominent on the page and isn’t lost in unnecessary graphic or design elements. Equally importantly, ensure that repeated elements of the design, such as navigation, search and login, are placed consistently throughout the site. Nothing annoys visitors more that having to play ‘hunt the button’ as they navigate through the pages of a website.
Universal Compatibility
Web designers face a battle to ensure that websites display consistently across the great range of browsers, devices and screen sizes that are in current use. It is, however, a battle worth engaging in, because the credibility of a website crumbles if it falls to pieces for an individual user. What’s required is an understanding of web compatibility issues and a rigorous testing regime across every device and browser you can get hold of, in order to eliminate, or at least minimise, compatibility issues.
Pay attention to these three key elements and you shouldn’t go too far wrong in your mission to create a website that instils a sense of trust in your visitors.
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