Web design is very important in user experience, and can even help to contribute to your SEO.
If your design is optimized, it can not only drive more people to the website, but also encourage them to spend more time browsing once they are there.
On the other hand, getting it wrong could see a high bounce rate with people leaving the site after only a brief look.
Here are five key ways to improve your web design.
1. Use Intuitive Navigation
You might feel clever to create some fancy new navigation system, or to remove clues altogether and have visitors working out how to get around. But at the end of the day, user experience is going to be improved if they can simply navigate in the intuitive way that they are supposed to.
This means a main menu bar towards the top of the page, with sub-menu options coming up either beneath this bar or in a sidebar.
Remember also to use the symbol of several lines above one another to denote a menu when converting to a mobile site. If you go for anything more complicated, than people are more likely to quit the page then figure out how to use it.
You should also make sure that the menu headers are clear and self-explanatory so that visitors can find what they are looking for easily.
2. Remove Clutter
It's tempting to fill a web page with many images, lots of text, and plenty of calls to action. But when everything is competing for attention, a visitor may simply end up feeling bewildered and going away.
Make sure that there is just one call to action on the page so that the visitor knows what to do, and ensure that text is broken up into smaller paragraphs.
Remove most of your images and keep it to just one focal point where possible. If the images are the point of the page, use scaling to make sure that one image is visible on the page at a time, or make a gallery option so that visitors can click on a small thumbnail before viewing the full image.
3. Give a Professional Appearance
Nothing ruins a website more than the use of dated images, quirky fonts, or low-quality images. Make sure to project a professional appearance at all times.
You should also bear in mind that text will help with SEO more than an image of text will, and that not all fonts are visible on all devices. If you want to stay in control of how the website looks to all users, this means using web-friendly fonts.
Images should be professional quality at high resolution, though scaled down to prevent slow load times, and you should keep the color scheme relevant.
See Also: 10+ Best WordPress Plugins to Optimize Images - Boost Your Website Speed
4. Make Every Page a Landing Page
Most websites are designed so that visitors will hop onto the home page, then navigate around from there. But this simply isn't the case for all visitors.
Some will come from a different page first, so you should treat every page as if it is a landing page. Give it the same striking appearance and clarity. You will find that your web design quality increases hugely.
See Also: Top Landing Page Creation and Optimization Tools
5. Delete Flash
Using flash? Get rid of it altogether. HTML5 is a much better option that can be seen by all web users, while Apple devices cannot view flash at all.
There's no reason to use an outdated display option which is not view-able by all visitors.
See Also: A Glimpse Over 5 HTML5 Tools For Your Inspiration
Using these keys, your web design will improve hugely overnight - and your clients will certainly thank you.