When it comes to web design practices, it’s easy to get hung up on the aesthetics. Should the logo appear on the left side of the screen, or does it look better on the right? How about a lighter blue for the section headers and a darker shade for the buttons? 

But in a virtual world where users have about two billion websites to land on, you need to make sure your website isn’t just a pretty face. It should also be designed for usability-how easy it is to navigate and how enjoyable & interactive it is for users. 

So today, we’ll help you attract and retain visitors by sharing some of the best practices for exceptional web design & usability.

Simplify Your Web Design

The look of your website is certainly important, but most users don’t come to your site to see how slick the design is. The truth is they want to complete some action, like buy a product, book a service, or, at the very least, find some piece of information.

So no matter how stunning they are, unnecessary design elements might only overwhelm users and make it difficult for users to accomplish their goals on your site. 

So the trick here is to go for simplicity. Use only necessary & functional design elements, like legible typefaces & graphics that help users perform a specific action. Also, don’t use a lot of colours. Make your website look clean and organised by using a maximum of five different colours on every web page. 

Website Consistency 

Your website’s overall look and feel should be similar and consistent across all the pages. These include elements, such as colour schemes, typefaces and even the writing tone. If you’re wondering where to start, look at your existing pull-up banners, outdoor signs and other promotional materials.

The appearance of these materials should be somewhat similar to the look and design of your website. It helps your business create a solid identity that boosts your brand recall offline & online. 

On your website, pages don’t necessarily have to follow a similar layout. You can build different layouts for specific page types, like landing pages & blogs. Then, use those multiple layouts consistently to make it easier for visitors to identify the type of information they’ll likely find on a given page.

Keep Visual Hierarchy in Mind

Visual hierarchy is all about arranging page elements in a way that visitors naturally gravitate towards the most crucial elements, like headers, buttons & calls-to-action. 

You can achieve this by adjusting the colour, size or position of the elements surrounding the most important details. For instance, you can put your header or tagline atop the visual hierarchy by making it bigger and brighter than the surrounding elements.

Then, you can have the call-to-action button as the second element in the visual hierarchy. That way, you can prompt users to perform a specific action.

Plan Out Intuitive Navigation

You can’t always rely on visual hierarchy to prompt visitors to do an action. So you also have to plan out intuitive navigation. Ideally, a visitor should land on the page of your website and not have to think extensively about what to read or click next. 

Here are a few tips to ensure moving from Point A to Point B is easy & frictionless:

• Keep the menu or structure of your primary navigation simple and near the top of the page.
• Include a search bar near the top to help users search pages or information via keywords.
• Add navigation in the website footer.
• Never make visitors dig too deep. Make a basic map by arranging pages like a pyramid, with the homepage on top and each linked page forming the next layer. It’s best practice to keep the map no more than three levels deep.

Aim for a User-Centric Web Design

Your target users’ preferences are all that matters. After all, if you’re not designing your website for them, who are you designing for? So, while the practices mentioned are great, the final key to achieving a user-centric web design is to do user testing, collect feedback and implement web design changes based on those. 

Here’s another important tip: don’t test your website’s usability by yourself. Whether you’ve designed the website or hired professional web design services, you’ve already invested time (or resources) into the design. That means you probably have biases. Instead, get testers who’ve never seen your website before and ask for feedback.

Start Creating Your Website with these Web Design Practices

With these best web design practices, you can start creating an aesthetically pleasing website that is functional and user-centric, too. It’s a huge step to creating a solid presence and getting more customers online.

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What Is On Page SEO?

It’s all about optimizing your website, content and coding, and we do this to rank higher in the search results. In turn, this brings you more search traffic, which can later be turned into an income.

When you really boil it down, on page SEO can be broken down into two parts. And when put together, they play a vital role in increasing your search volume.

So what are they?

Optimizing The Code

In essence, this is making sure any HTML codes you use throughout the page is neatly displayed. This benefits the search engine as it makes it easier to crawl your site.

What you’re looking to do is make sure there is no junk code (code that adds no value) and your keywords are optimized correctly. 

User Experience

Essentially, this means making everything look pretty and easy to use for your users. You can do this by formatting the page to display all the information clearly.

This could be using short and snappy sentences or adding styling to your bullet points.

These two factors alone can have a severe impact on where your website ranks in search engines and how long the user stays on your page.

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The 5 Most Effective On-Page SEO Factors

I’m sure you’re dying to know how to get started, and what factors will help you rank your pages.

So, without further ado here are five of the most effective on page SEO factors, that won’t cost you a penny and can be achieved easily:

1. Mobile Responsiveness

People spend more time than ever browsing the internet with their mobile devices, which is why Google finds it so necessary to have a website that responds well to mobile phones.

In fact, they find it so important that in 2015 Google started to penalize websites that weren’t optimized for mobile phones. This means any site that doesn’t format itself for a user-friendly mobile website will struggle to rank no matter how good the content is.

This was set in stone after the 2018 mobile indexing update. If you’re not sure how mobile-friendly your website is, you can check it out here.

2. Website Speed

In this day and age, people want the information there are searching for quickly. If you can’t provide the speed, they will go to another site.

It’s been an important ranking factor for the best part of 10 years, and it’s definitely something to take seriously. Every millisecond counts, so the better the site speed, the higher up the rankings you go.

Your site speed is in your control and needs to be taken seriously; a slow site will cost you traffic that could have been turned into profit. If you’re interested to see how fast your website is, and areas in which you can improve, GTmetrix is a great place to start.

3. Internal Linking

This is another factor that is surprisingly underutilized considering the power it holds. And it’s essential for a few factors.

Internal links encourage people to stay on your website for a little bit longer, as well as providing extra value to the readers. But there’s another reason:

It helps crawlers navigate every corner of your site quickly and efficiently, and they love it.

As you’re writing content for your site, you may notice that your other pages would fit nicely and provide extra value for your readers.

You’ll then share the link juice between the two pages, thus pushing you up the SERPs.

4. Title Beginning With The Keyword

SEO is all about gaining favour with search engines, and putting the keyword at the start of the title helps massively. In fact, it’s actually one of the most important on page SEO factors.

And like most of the above, it’s super achievable and costs no money. Having the keyword at the start of the title allows the search engine to know exactly what the page is about in milliseconds.

If you’re not great at creating catchy and engaging titles, you can download the Yoast plugin. It will help you create great titles that are SEO ready. One thing you have to make sure of is that the title of the page is H1. If it’s not, you could find yourself having problems ranking the page.

5. Content-Length

Many people will think the length of the content isn’t that important, but it is very relevant. Upon research, I’ve seen time and time again that longer-form posts will outperform any slim looking content.

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And when you look further into it, you’ll notice most page one results will be around 2,000 words. It seems that Google prefers a more in-depth approach to content because it provides more value for the reader.

Now, what counts as long-form content can vary between niches, so it’s worth doing your research. By checking what other people are ranking for, you’ll know exactly what you need in your content.

Finishing Off On Page SEO: The Guide For Beginners

Remember, on page SEO is in your total control, and the best bit is it’s completely free to achieve.

When done correctly, it can be extremely potent at boosting your page up through the SERPs. 

We use on page SEO for two reasons: improve the readers’ experience and help search engines crawl the website with ease.

Remember, your primary focus should be:

• Internal links
• Length of content
• Site speed
• Mobile responsive
• Keywords at the start of your title 

By implementing these five key on page SEO factors, you’ll see good results. It only takes a small amount of brainpower and a bit of your time.