10 Research-Backed Web Design Tips: How to Design a Website That Works

Building a highly engaging site has become such a difficult process that it’s hard to determine the dos and don’ts of web design. You can find thousands of different opinions online, so inexperienced designers have a problem identifying the best practices. 

There are, however, lots of science-backed web design practices that can help you to create an attractive website. In this post, we will show you the 10 most productive ways to do it. Let’s take a look!

Keep It Minimal

The basic rule of web design is to keep it minimal and rely only on elements that can really make an impact on visitors. If you add too many elements to the webpage, they will distract visitors and increase bounce rates. Remember that less is more in this case, so don’t overwhelm potential customers with irrelevant details. 

Important Things Go Above the Fold

The entire web design community is debating whether the fold really exists, but we strongly encourage you to take it into consideration and place important elements above the fold. After all, reports reveal that users spend 80% of the viewing time above the fold. In such circumstances, the only logical thing is to respect the fold and keep it in mind while designing a site.

Mind the Load Speed

A typical user expects a website to load in two or three seconds the most. It’s a fundamental principle of user experience, so make sure to improve page load speed and ensure flawless consumer journey. If you don’t know how to do that, give Pingdom a try. The platform will analyze your URLs and give you suggestions on how to boost load speed in a few simple steps.

Use Lists

Content creators often use lists to grab readers’ attention and increase dwell times. The same goes for web design because you can encourage visitors to consume more of your content with bulletins and listicles. Lists are highly readable and scannable, which makes them perfect for super-quick consumption. And we have an extra tip for you – save the first and the last bulletin for the most important information because readers remember them longest.

Add Social Proofs

Did you know that word of mouth acts as a key influencer in their purchasing decisions and drives over $6 trillion of annual consumer spending? It’s a precious conclusion that clearly shows you need to take advantage of social proofs when creating a website. Of course, the point is to make it as trustworthy as possible using comments, images, or even videos of real customers. 

Use Images of Real People

Speaking of social proofs and images, another important advice is to use photos of real people to enrich website content. Human faces make the content look more credible and convincing, but don’t fall into the trap of using fake stock photos. This would be a big mistake that could jeopardize the authority of your site and your professional reputation in general.

Avoid Carousels

A lot of websites, especially in the field of online retail, use image carousels to present as many products as possible. However, this is widely considered to be an obsolete web design tactic that slows down website performance and degrades user experience. Therefore, our suggestion is to avoid carousels and use them only if you really feel it could improve users’ browsing experiences.

Write a Direct Headline

When you write a webpage headline, you must make it direct and straightforward. Doing so, you will convince visitors to move on and keep consuming the content they are looking for. Professional essay writing services know this trick very well, which is why they create up to the point and keyword-rich headlines such as “Hire professional essay writers.” The title says it all instantly and users know they’ve come to the right place. 

Highlight CTAs with Strong Colors

The goal of every webpage is to convince people to take a highly specific action. This is why we use calls to action (CTA) for engagement purposes. 

'The best way to make CTAs stand out is to make them larger and more visible. Use bright colors such as red, orange, or green to highlight a CTA and make sure to create a strong contrast compared to the background color and the rest of the webpage content' – says Ben Williams, the main web designer at the CakeHR.

Pay Attention to the Style

The last tip on our list is to pay attention to the style and use typography that perfectly matches the brand personality. Besides that, you should combine beautiful fonts with quality content to maximize the influence of your design on target audiences.

Conclusion

Building a website is not exactly rocket science, but many designers get confused easily due to the number of different suggestions and opinions they can find online. In this post, we showed you 10 research-backed web design tips. Have you ever followed any of these techniques? Let us know in comments so we can discuss this interesting topic!