5 Principles of Basic Web Design for Beginners
Having a professionally built website is not only beneficial but necessary if you want to stand out amongst your competition. In today's technology age, people are not searching for you in phone books anymore. Potential clients are Googling you, searching your website for contact information, and comparing your website to competitors in order to determine who suits their needs the best. Unfortunately, not every business owner sees the value in spending money to have a website professionally built to reflect their business and personality. Here are a few principles for basic web design that you shall not miss.
- Part 1: Suggestions for basic web page design
- Part 2: 5 basic web design principles you should know
- Part 3: Create a basic web design online
Suggestions for basic web page design
In the modern business world, your website is an extension of your business card, integral for establishing your brand, professionalism, and customer base. Underestimating the value of good web design can endanger all of the above; if your site looks unprofessional, confused, and unnavigable, your company becomes synonymous with these traits. Most of the beginners even don't know the basic website design principles. Use our basic web design tips, and use your online platform to elevate your business to where it wants to be.
- Provides a Better Impression: Having a website that is professionally designed ensures your site will give visitors a good first impression. Amateur websites can come across as unprofessional and less credible.
- Boosts Revenue: A professional, well-designed website will attract visitors and help boost revenue as a result.
- Improves Search Rankings: An outdated and unprofessional website will only hinder search ranking performance, so it’s best to move forward with having a professional website design so that you keep your website moving up in rankings among popular search engines like Google.
- Attract Potential Customers: Professional website design not only attracts visitors to your site but helps keep them there, exploring what your business has to offer.
- Cost Saving: By having a professional website design in place right from the beginning, you avoid having to update an amateur website that was designed poorly, which saves you money.
- Create a Brand Identity: Establishing a consistent brand identity is essential for building business credibility and trustworthiness, and having a professional website helps you communicate your brand’s story more effectively.
5 basic web design principles you should know
Are you planning to design your business website or do you already have one but maybe there’s room for improvement? In both cases, there are some basic web design tips that you need to know before you start designing your website. These website design basics for beginners and for experts as well. And it’s not about how good your website looks. Good website design needs a wide range of professionals having expertise in different areas. Their collective efforts need to be put in when there is a critical decision to take place.
1. Keep it simple
The over-designed website may not work. Putting too many elements on the page may lead to distracting visitors from the main purpose of your website. Simplicity always works in an effective web page design. Clean and fresh design of your website not only makes the website appealing but also help the user to navigate from one page to another seamlessly. Loading a website having design features that do not serve the purpose may be frustrating. Keep your design as simple as possible so that the visitors can feel it easy-to-use and can find their ways easily.
2. Typography & Readability
No matter how good your design is text still rules the website as it provides users the desired information. Since search engine crawlers are very much familiar with this data, it becomes an integral part of SEO activities. You should keep your typography visually appealing and readable for visitors, along with the tricky use of keywords, meta-data, and other SEO-sensitive elements. Consider using fonts that are easier to read. The modern sans-serif fonts as Arial, Helvetica, etc. can be used for the body texts. Make proper combinations of typefaces for each and every design element such as headlines, body texts, buttons, etc.
3. Colors and Images
Color is one of the most essential parts of the web design basics. A well thought out color palette can go a long way to enhance the user experience. Complementary colors create balance and harmony. Using contrasting colors for the text and background will make reading easier on the eye. Vibrant colors create emotion and should be used sparingly (e.g. for buttons and call to actions). Last but not least, white space/ negative space is very effective at giving your website a modern and uncluttered look. A picture can speak a thousand words, and choosing the right images for your website can help with brand positioning and connecting with your target audience. If you don’t have high-quality professional photos on hand, consider purchasing stock photos to lift the look of your website. Also, consider using infographics, videos, and graphics as these can be much more effective at communicating than even the most well-written piece of text.
4. Responsive/Mobile Friendly
The responsive design used to be optional for effective basic web design. Today, if your website is not available across multiple devices and multiple screen sizes, it’ll struggle to not only attract users but also rank well in Google. To make your website mobile-friendly, the easiest place to start is from scratch by rebuilding it with a responsive layout.
Otherwise, you can create a dedicated mobile site that is separate from your main site and specifically optimized for mobile users. With the growing use of smartphones, tablets, and now phablets, making your website fit for mobile users is a must. From there, you can further enhance your design by following best UX and UI practices for mobile design.
5. Use Whitespaces
White space should be an integral part of your website. It can be used to separate the different elements and lead the eye to the important part of the website. If your use of white space is limited – or non-existent – your pages will look too busy and very cluttered. People won’t stop and read what’s there because it all looks too difficult or would take too long. Try taking out 80% of the content on your home page. Put it on another page and leave a ‘learn more’ link to it on your home page. Simple is better because it is less confusing to the user and allows them to get what they want more quickly.
Create a basic web design online
With Wondershare Mockitt you can create basic web page design. Mockitt has tons of interactive and user-friendly Design Templates . These templates will make your web or mobile applications more elegant.
We mentioned some of its amazing template designs:
Picture Social Prototype
This is a social sharing platform template for users who love photography and wallpapers. This design is created by Ink Knife. You can easily reuse the components of each page. It has interactive and user-friendly registration form.
Login (Welcome Message / Mobile Verification Login / Warm Reminder / Quick Login / User Agreement). This picture social prototype template is designed to fulfil the requirements of young users. The users of this project are young people who love photography and sharing. They are generally in the range of 16-30 years old, young and more aesthetically critical users, so the design goal: to meet the user's aesthetics and needs, to create a convenient and fashionable, Simple and healthy sharing platform.
Tourism and Entertainment Prototype
The design of the content and some functional concepts are beyond the norm. This product is one of the service products of a certain entertainment industry. This product simulates a closed entertainment environment (without normal contact information and signal network link), in order to solve the convenience of tourist service and entertainment, Night (killing time at night) exists as a small butler. All designed functions are reasonable and pure.
At the same time, as the main program, the functions contained in the application will be used as multi-scenario sub-programs (such as: Alipay applet, WeChat applet) with scalable services. The sub-programs are not independent individuals Exist, closely related to the main program depending on the situation.
Story Behind This Theme:
- The theme cafe has established a "multi-day amusement park". The park is a closed park. Once you enter, you cannot leave in the middle. In the theme cafe, the food, accommodation and entertainment of tourists are carried out by the services provided by the theme cafe;
- Passengers need to provide personal information to purchase themed cafe tickets and create members for them;
- The behavior of passengers in the park is managed by the membership code provided by the APP, such as identity verification, payment, contact, and making friends;
- The park uses the internal network as the only data transmission, and passengers can use the external network signal transmission through value-added services
