Who doesn’t like to see their design featured in Mashable, TechCrunch or DesignModo? I would raise my hand for sure. Suprisingly, it is not easy to catch the big guys eyes, but at least you can pick up the basic of beautiful design below:
Speed
For a noob (read: newbie), you would want to add as many things as possible on your first project to make your design catch the crowd. Trust me, it doesn’t work that way, guys =). A good website should prioritize speed. Who would have seen your amazing color combination if nobody can load your site in less than 5 seconds ?
Always apply the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) rule and choose your hosting wisely. Ask them their server location ask for a test speed.
Navigation
Okay so someone visits your website, yayyy! Congratulations! But, don’t do the victory dance yet. You still need to put some serious thought on your site layout. Of course you want visitors to stay longer on your site to browse and red your content, not trying to find the content. See the difference?
If you are in WordPress, use a breadcumb to help in navigation. Learn about breadcumb here
Branding
It is by nature that people start scanning a site from top to bottom and left to right, so make sure you focus on the top left area and lead them to other pages you want them to visit. Placing your logo and tagline on header will help visitors to understand what is your blog is all about. Some websites are not mainstream and put their logo on the right side. This is also cool, you just need to do a split test to know what work best for you.
Colors
There is no exact guideline for this, just keep in mind that your selected colors should flow and support your content. If you build a website about kitchen, then choose a girly and soft color. Similarly for a masculine store like selling motorcycle spare parts, select a dark color, black-grey. Learn more about color combination here. When in a doubt, always go for WHITE. Even my gradma told me the same — #seriouslykidding —. You will never go wrong with white. Not only it will give more space on your site so people can see your content clearly, it helps in loading your site faster.
Content
Content is the king! That is the tagline in search engine marketing, which is true. A website, regardless for personal or business use is design to attract targeted visitors to show your portfolio, offer, articles, and many more. Your writing style should sound the same with the business model; an offline business site requires using formal language, while a blog can be casual. In addition to this, Google and your readers love new contents so make sure you refresh your contents regularly. It is also advisable to add a clear “Call to Action” message to redirect readers to your final goal, for example if you are building a website for offline business owners, make sure you add the address, working hours, phone number and email addresses will lead to a new customer because technically you persuade visitors to give a call.
Media
A content with only text is absolutely boring and not recommended. Your readers are human, and people are dynamic, so please them. =) When adding related images or videos, do a check on their rights if it is under CC (Creative commons) rights or Reuse with modification.
Link
A good website should have a reasonable number of internal links and outbound links. Internal linking from one page to another page will generate a “spider web” to ensure search engines that you are talking about the same topic for the whole time.
Moreover, you need to make sure your site stays open in front of your customers to decrease bounce rate. This can be achieved by setting outbound links (links that take visitors away from your site) to load in a new window. With this method, visitors will at least revisit your site if they need more resources.
Think SEO
An on-page SEO is an important step of the whole SEO process that covers heading tags (H1, H2, H3), anchor text, keyword density, and many more. The bottom rule for this is not over optimized your content for a particular keyword, but also keep the content readable and maintain the flow.
To sum up all of those practical tips, you just need to select your topic wisely and be consistent. When you enjoy your topic, you will be the only one who can understand what design and content fit with your website.
