Today, online businesses are becoming the mainstream. One of the reasons for building an online business is because it is cheaper. It is easier to manage and your customer is much more reachable through the internet. Since technology is so abundant, it is only natural to use it to generate income. Making Facebook pages and Instagram accounts will help in endorsing your business but having a website will have a different impact to your business than having social media alone. Websites will give credibility to your brand. However, websites will only be credible if it looks credible. It will be effective if it is designed properly. It cannot just simply be made for the purpose of saying, “you have a website”. Website design is a thorough process that needs planning and attention to details. In building a website, you take note of the visual appearance and user’s experience. Visual appearance consists of layout, color scheme, typography, and multimedia. User’s experience pertains to navigation and search engine optimization.
Visual appearance is the obvious function of website design Brisbane. The visual elements make the website beautiful and eye catching however, there is a deeper purpose behind these elements. Aside from the aesthetics, in choosing these elements you must put in mind the psychological and rational reason behind it. Below are some tips when choosing visual elements.
Color Scheme: In choosing the color scheme of your website, you must not simply choose what you like. Color scheme is the arrangement of colors. The color scheme must be in line with your business. Usually the color scheme would be based on your logo. Sometimes the type of business is associated with a color. For example, if your business is about food, red is a good choice of color because it makes people hungry hence, they will be attracted to your products. Another example is if your business is related to agriculture, green and brown would be the perfect color choices. There is a psychology behind colors that affects the perception of viewers. The type of customers you want to attract should also affect your color choice. It is important to know the right color scheme for your website because it shows what type of business you have.
Typography: Typography is the arrangement of text in a design. It is about the placement of the text, its font style and size. There are different types of fonts; some are creative and some are serious. Your text fonts should depend on what you want to convey to your viewers. Font size gives focus to certain contents. Not everything should be the same in size. Titles are usually bigger than others to give importance to it and to attract customers to read it. The important thing in font size is that it should be readable. You should also be aware of your fonts’ availability in browsers. Make sure it is applicable to all to avoid having your customers seeing different looks.
Multimedia: Today, people rely more on visual aids. When viewers scan your website, they usually don’t read your contents. Using pictures will attract people to your website and will be interested in reading your contents. Adding pictures also helps in selling your products. Videos are also helpful to share something to you viewers. Sometimes it is easier to watch and listen than read a lengthy text. Other details like animation and other movements also ignite interest of website visitors. Make sure to put high quality images and high definition videos. Poor quality pictures and videos will negatively affect your website.
Layout: The overall layout will tie the color scheme, typography, and multimedia together. Individually, there are certain guidelines in choosing these elements but it is important that all of it works together. The layout showcases the visual appearance of your website.
User’s Experience is the part of website design that focuses on how your customers would be able to use your website. It is important to users that they are able to navigate through your website with ease and also, they are able to access your website easily.
Navigation: Navigation is an important element in a user's experience. Without the proper navigation, users would not have the interest to explore your website. This element is less focused on creativity and is more direct. To ease your site’s navigation, putting on tabs or hyperlinks leading to certain parts of your website will be helpful to users. Putting directional arrows and back to the top button are also good navigation tools. Another thing you can put are sitemaps or search bars for easy navigation.
Speed: Users are impatient nowadays; no one likes slow websites. If your customers have to wait for your site to load, you risk losing them. One way to make sites faster is through image compression. Image files are heavy and can slow down your site so minimizing images files will make your website faster.
SEO: Search engine optimization are methods used to enhance the visibility of a website on search engine results. SEO is important for users to reach your website. The goal in SEO is to have higher rankings in search results. Some ways to improve SEO is through meta description, image alt text, and mobile responsiveness. Meta description is a tag in HTML that consists of a short summary about the contents of a web page. This is seen below the Title tag (which is also in SEO) of search results. Image alt text helps in describing images to computers since computers cannot read images. This helps search engines view pictures in your websites. Make sure your website is mobile responsive. It should be accessible to all types of devices to improve the SEO of your website
Both elements of visual appearance and user’s experience are important in designing a website. These two support each other and are dependent with one another. Visual appearance will not matter if users will not be able to experience it with ease likewise, visual appearance is part of the user’s experience.
