Starting (or even updating) your website might quickly become an overwhelming task, where suddenly you find yourself wondering in all directions not knowing where to focus first and what will have a real impact for your digital brand.
Leading experts in ux research, branding and web design reveal the secrets that help them create meaningful experiences through digital products. Learn from these experts’ experience.
We asked web designers and bloggers a simple question: “What would be your no.1 tip when designing websites?”
Emilia Ohrtmann
@emiliaohrtmann
Watch her in action
“Tell your website visitor what your website is about. You have a few seconds when someone lands on your website to convince them that they are in the right place. Tell them immediately what you do, who you are (where you are if that’s important) and how you can help them to confirm that you are the right website to be on. This should not only be done through words but also through the images and branding you use on your website.”
Sudipa – A Sip of Life
@realsudipa
“
McKinzie – Moms Make Cents
@momsmakecents
“Always double…no triple check to make sure that your pages are mobile-friendly. I switched themes on my site a few months ago and rebuilt some pages with a page building tool. It was absolutely gorgeous on
Paige Battcher – Kismet Ideas
@paigebattcher
“Simplicity. People are busy and distracted so the number one advice I can give would be to keep things simple: from the amount of copy, to the number of menu items, to the features and elements. I love colors and surprises and textures, so I’m not saying minimalism. I’m saying simplicity is your friend from top to bottom when designing a great website; and if done right, it trickles down into your business, your communications with clients, your file organizing, and the processes with your team! Hope this helps!”
Edward Lozano – Valcach
@thegreyscalestudio
“Load time: Everyone hates a website that takes eternities to load.
Mobile friendly: It is now commonplace to access websites from multiple devices with multiple screen sizes Colours & Images: A well thought out color palette and good image quality can do a lot to improve the user experience.”
Anita Tilly – Ymani Tilly Design
@ymanitilly
@YmaniTillyDesign
“I would advise creating a moodboard first. The moodboard and the process of creating it will help to start with the creative flow and organize your thoughts. Look for pictures, words, quotes, textures anything which best captures you and your business and represents the qualities of your brand! By doing this, the mood board will help bring things into focus. It helps with the emotions and your vision, that you want your brand to show.”
Suzi Whitford – Start a Mom Blog
@startamomblog
“Easy of navigation. I think it’s extremely important to have an easy to navigate website. If your readers arrive on your site and do not know how to find the information they need, they’ll go somewhere else. Clear menu items, a search bar and related information are just a few key elements!”
Ashley Gadd – Your designer Ash
@YourDesignerAsh
Your Designer Ash
“Your website needs a conversion goal mapped out for your audience to take action on. Whether this
Your website is the
Anfisa Bogomolova – @anfisign
@anfisign
Watch her in action
“If you care about your website users and businesses you design for, then leave your creative ego at the door and design for others. It doesn’t really matter if your website looks cool or old-school. Many of us, creatives, forget that what we do is a business service, not an art. Our main goal is to learn what your users expect and ensure the right experience in order to reach business goals. Even if it has to be an ugly design. It’s ok!”
Thomas Uzuegbunem – Nurse Money Talk
@nursemoneytalk
“I think many times new bloggers or entrepreneurs try to do too much with their website design. Doing too much can be overwhelming to the visitor and make it difficult to navigate. With my sites I strive for simplicity.”
Shaylee Smith
@shayleesmithwp
“It’s important to make sure your audience knows exactly what your website is about as soon as they land on it. Nothing makes someone click away faster than a confusing design with no clear direction or too many distractions. Keep things simple and let them know who you are and what you’re going to provide them right away.”
Angela Johnson – Christian Blogging Academy
@ChristianBloggingAcademy
“One of the best things you can do before you begin designing your website is to draw out your concept. When you sketch out your ideas first before you start making your design you won’t be stuck staring at a screen trying to figure out what you want to create. Then once you start the actual design of your website, you will have a reference sheet that you can look at and it will keep you on track and make the design process go a lot quicker and smoother.”
Wrapping up
What are you going to do with these tips?
Your digital brand is your new business card. Make sure you take the time to fill in the gaps and create a solid website that speaks to your target audience.
Do NOT forget:
- Tell your audience how can you help them.
- Tell your audience what to do next.
- Align your goals with your audience’s needs.
- Define your brand with a moodboard.
- Plan ahead, sketch before implement.
- Design for others not for yourself.
- Test on multiple devices.
- Keep things simple.
HUGE thanks to everyone who contributed to this post! Spread the word. Don’t keep this to yourself!
28 comments
Hey !! this article is really very amazing to read and all of the points that you have putten up are of great importance. I agree with the point that the website should have a fast loading time so having a website is not enough but also you will have to see how fast the website loads because if the loading time is slow visitors will not stick to your site and move to your competitor’s site. Thank You for sharing this beautiful article.
Great And thanks for sharing! Web Design is the second step to improve your website after SEO.
Yeah! Great tips. Mobile friendly websites are more worthier these days. And testing on multiple devices plays major role. Thanks.
This is a topic that’s close to my heart… Thank you! Where
are your contact details though?
Hi Togel,
If you want to get in touch you can reach us at admin@yuxer.com or on Facebook
Hi there! I realize this is kind of off-topic but I needed to ask. Does operating a well-established website such as yours take a lot of work? I’m completely new to running a blog however I do write in my journal on a daily basis.
I’d like to start a blog so I can easily share my experience and thoughts online. Please let me know if you have any kind of recommendations or tips for new aspiring bloggers. Appreciate it!
Awesome tips to optimize the website. As we are working on our website development with a leading Web design Sunshine Coast, this post gives me a great understanding to get effective website optimization. Thanks for sharing an useful post.
I think this is an informative post and it is very useful and knowledgeable. therefore, I would like to thank you for the efforts you have made in writing this article.
Thanks for the tips..
Edward Lozano – Valcach and Anfisa Bogomolova – @anfisign are just awesome option. Wow, well the list is extensive and really really helpful. thanks for sharing this useful info Pal 🙂
Great post. I am facing many of these issues as well..
What issue are you struggling the most with?
These are some really good tips by the experts. One that I feel always works is the KISS rule. The lesser the clutter, the better the chances for visitors getting what they want.
The simpler the better. Fewer options you give your audience the more action they will be willing to take. Nobody enjoys making hard decisions. 🙂
With having so much written content do you ever run into any problems of plagiarism or copyright infringement? My site
has a lot of exclusive content I’ve either created myself or outsourced but it looks like a lot of
it is popping it up all over the internet without my agreement.
Do you know any solutions to help protect against content from being ripped off? I’d really appreciate it.
We like to use https://smallseotools.com/plagiarism-checker/ to find our content being copied in other places.
However, we don’t have any legal advice in regards to how to address it once you find it.
The first step will be to contact directly the website owners for a friendly arrangement.
At this time it appears like Drupal is the preferred blogging platform available right now.
(from what I’ve read) Is that what you are using on your blog?
No, we use WordPress and we are very happy with it.
We have tried Drupal but only for testing purposes.
Hi this is kind of of off topic but I was wanting to know if blogs
use WYSIWYG editors or if you have to manually code with HTML.
I’m starting a blog soon but have no coding experience so I wanted to get guidance from someone with experience.
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Hi,
Sure, most of the modern content management systems like WordPress use a WYSIWYG editor like tinyMCE.
If you have no code experience, the best option would be to go for an intuitive CMS and possibly use a predefined theme.
If you have more questions, head to our Facebook page. We will be happy to help you.
Awesome! Thanks for sharing the knowledge and keep posting more.
Oohhhh I need this!!! I’m currently working on updating my blog, so this is very helpful.
If it wasn’t for the advice of some of these awesome bloggers, I wouldn’t have a website. They are amazing and so helpful!
Great tips! Pinning for reference. Thank you!
I love designing a new website and these tips are great. I always start with sketching it out on paper first. Love seeing my vision some to life.
These are awesome tips!
Lauren
This was such fun and eye opening article to read! Always great to have input from so many professionals:)
Great advice from the pros. My favorite tips are ‘ease of navigation’ and ensuring that your site is mobile friendly.