10 Principles of Good Web Design

These principles are based on user perception and work every time. They guarantee your website will be attractive, convenient, memorable, and have high conversion rates.

There’s a common belief among designers that users first assess any website visually, then logically. This is only partly true. The first impression is compound, not purely visual. A site is not a Dribbble shot, and a user is not a designer.

So let’s look at the website through users’ eyes. What is important to them?

1. Relevant content

This means information and graphics that the user defines as valuable and necessary. Relevant content meets or, ideally, exceeds user expectations. It’s exactly what the user has been looking for, what he always wanted to see!

Relevant design is an integral part of this content. It addresses the audience in their own visual and associative language. And the reason they understand it is not that the designer knows design; they understand it because the designer knows people.

The success of any project comes from knowing the client’s business, website goals, and user goals. It means collecting information, analyzing it, and developing a website strategy. It means studying user groups and compiling their portraits, as well as repeated testing.

Don’t expect to create a relevant design just because you’ve read the TOR and checked out your competitors’ designs.

Look for a visual language that your audience understands.

This language will show the users that you’re on the same wavelength. Find a style that suits the tastes of a given user group. Choose images and pictures that evoke strong emotions and resonate deeply. Write headlines and copy that won’t be ignored. Do something special, something that motivates and inspires.

All this will combine to make your product unique and desirable.

2. Good visuals

Even the best of concepts can be easily spoiled by poor execution. It’s the quality of the design that instantly forms the first impression.

People can intuitively tell the good from the bad, the beautiful and coherent from the ugly and unbalanced. Bad visual design causes distrust and a desire to look elsewhere. The quality of design directly affects people’s view of the company and its product.

Here are the golden rules of visual design:

• stylistic unity;
• clear structure;
• good composition;
• visual balance;
• hierarchy of elements;
• system of primary and secondary accents;
• harmonious color palette;
• visual guides;
• no unnecessary or distracting elements;
• breathing space;
• legible fonts;
• easy-to-understand icons;
• familiar shapes and locations of elements (e.g. buttons, navigation panel, search bar);
• high-quality, original images.

All of the above creates a positive visual impression.

Follow the golden rules of design.

Good design always matches the type of business and is part of the company’s brand building.

3. Freshness

Good web design is innovative. It captures the zeitgeist and holds a promise for the future. If your information isn’t up-to-date, you will lose your users. Nobody wants to live in the past. Outdated design makes people ignore the content. They think it’s all obsolete, including the product. A design copied from competitors is just as bad. People have already seen something similar, so they won’t perceive it as new and unique.

Use new tools, current trends and styles. To stay relevant, look beyond design, as well. The wider your horizons, the more ideas you generate; this will enable you to create unique and fun designs.

Stay young and hungry for new things.

Effective websites get timely updates, follow the trends, and look fresh. But don’t scare away your users by breaking the familiar interaction patterns.

4. Meeting expectations

You can attract viewership with nice, fresh visuals — but still fail to meet their expectations.

The user needs quick answers to the following five questions:

• what is on offer?
• do I need it?
• what makes you guys better than others?
• can you be trusted?
• how do I get it?

The wow effect from a gorgeous design evaporates almost as soon as it appears. Then the customer turns into a pragmatic Scrooge type. He wants to get what he wants without wasting his time on irrelevant stuff.

Meet the users’ expectations and exceed them.

The answers to the five questions must underlie the architecture of your website from the planning stage. This will save you time and prevent lots of grief.

Don’t confuse website goals and user goals. Anything of no value to the user must be kept behind the scenes.

Avoid creating the impression that the website was created to achieve business objectives. The user is there for their own reasons; eliminate any unnecessary obstacles on their way.

When your business gives the users what they want, it gets rewarded in turn.

The user goal must be clearly articulated. It’s not enough to just show them the way. Try to visualize the goal using every design tool at your disposal.

If the goal is too complex or cannot be visualized (it happens), look for suitable images, metaphors, or associations. Any process can be shown through videos, animation, or illustrations. It’s easier to comprehend this way. The user sees an image of their goal and becomes even more willing to interact with the website.

The goal path must be simple and enjoyable. Eliminate any obstacles and extra steps.

Make the user goal visible and simplify the path to it.

5. Usefulness

A good website is useful, and it should be obvious at first glance.

Emphasize usefulness with every design and content tool. Nobody’s going to scroll to the bottom of the page to discover the benefits and advantages gathering dust in the far corner. Manage attention, highlight the important things, demonstrate usefulness and motivate the user from the outset.

Successful and popular sites offer extra features or useful bonuses beyond the main offer.

These can include video instructions, tips, brief news reports, a calendar, a map, a list of useful links, etc. Entertainment also works well: add some minigames, funny or educational videos, a block of stories or memes. Be careful, however, not to overload the page and distract from the main objectives. Everything must be justified and then tested.

Such things make your website more valuable and attractive in the eyes of the user, boosting retention. The user feels that you care about them and want to make them feel good. It’s also a good way to get the edge on your competitors.

Emphasize user benefits more than company benefits.

Read more: Increasing Product Value in 5 Easy Steps

6. Ease of use

A good website raises no questions. It provides easily accessible answers where the user expects to find them. It offers only those features that are useful and necessary. It has just enough of everything and nothing more.

A simple, intuitive interface has:

• predictable navigation
• an organized structure
• only necessary and useful features
• the simplest possible fill-out forms
• an easily understandable goal path

The best guiding principle in design is Quality Over Quantity.

Functionality must be tested multiple times, especially if the project has advanced options that the user will have to learn.

7. Typography

Designers tend to see fonts and text merely as design elements. They don’t care about the copy. But users perceive written content differently! To them, the copy is as important as the images, if not more so.

A designer who fails to understand the content and doesn’t understand the users’ needs can easily botch the presentation of the copy. Typical mistakes include concealing important passages to make the text block more compact, highlighting irrelevant stuff, using illegible off-white fonts, and so on.

The key principles of good typography are:

• clear hierarchy;
• contrast;
• appropriate character height (see Size Calculator);
• matching proportions (spaces between characters and words, line height);
• simple typeface for main copy;
• limited line length (max 60 characters for desktop & 45 characters for mobile screen);
• no more than 2 typefaces per website (max 3);
• left justification (don’t overuse center justification).

Make your copy enjoyable to read.

Choose fonts appropriate to the website concept, the overall design style, the tastes and views of the audience. And don’t forget to test everything!

8. Emotions & motivation

A good and user-friendly website often has low conversions and does little to expand the audience. This usually happens when a particular field of business is extremely competitive. The users have trouble remembering one website in a sea of similar ones. A website that invokes no emotion is easily ignored and forgotten.

Users love emotional design. Such design has to be deliberately mapped out based on detailed user portraits that reflect their personalities.

Include photos and videos of people. They have to be authentic, not staged. The idea is to reflect the feelings of your audience and draw them in. Finding such imagery is not an easy task, but it’s totally worth it. It’s the anchor that you will plant in the user’s mind. Be gentle and delicate.

Look for images that resonate with the user’s feelings.

Motivating users is another effective tool. If you know your audience, you can inspire them with ideas represented by visual incentives. The most loyal and grateful user is one who is inspired.

Read more:

Emotional Design

Five tools to make your design effective and memorable

9. Adaptivity & responsiveness

Whatever device is used to access your website, it should not affect ease of use. The website must never be distorted beyond recognition or lose important features. We can use adaptive or responsive design, depending on what the business and the audience require. Responsive design uses one template for all devices; adaptive design uses a different template for each device. These things must be considered in advance.

Adaptivity and responsiveness depend on the quality of both design and development.

10. Trust

In the user’s value system, trust is the most important thing. Remember this at the concept stage and make sure you don’t forget it throughout the project.

A trustworthy website offers:

• high-quality, relevant design and content;
• true information;
• openness;
• help and feedback;
• proof of expertise (certificates, licenses);
• links to other websites;
• authentic and sincere reviews.

Applying these 10 principles will make your website popular, help it stand out from the competition, and boost conversion rates. It’s going to take a lot of elbow grease, but the reward is worth it!