A compelling design or enticing content is not enough for a successful, professional website. There must also be a sense of style that feeds your website’s user experience and functionality while being easy to understand at first glance. That said, different people prefer different styles, and preferences can be poles apart. But still, there are a few ground rules that should be followed when deciding on the appearance of your website. Here are 5 quick tips that you can follow to keep your website professional and successful.

Keep A Minimalistic Homepage

People don’t really read on the web. They simply scan pages, picking out keywords and sentences. Keeping this in mind, it’s better to target on emotions rather than word count. The lesser the information you feed visitors, better are the chances of them to remember. That makes it more likely for them to do what you wanted them to do in the first place. Text and calls to action are necessary, of course, but make sure to break them up with larger subheadings and legible paragraphs. Moreover, use images or icons as alternative ways to communicate.

Design With Visual Hierarchy In Mind

We’ve evolved a lot over the years. With computer screens and smartphones, as the technology to display information evolves, it remains the designer’s job to arrange the content in a clear manner. The amount of time to grab someone’s attention and tell them what your site is about, is very less. With a clear hierarchy to your information, readers can’t help but unconsciously follow the breadcrumbs you have left for them. Then apply color, contrast, size and spacing for further accentuation, remaining conscious of what is drawing attention on your page and making sure that it’s always intentional. Strips are one of the best design elements for creating a strong visual hierarchy.

Easy To Read Content

Readability measures how easy it is for people to recognize words, sentences, and phrases. When your site’s readability is high, users will be able to efficiently scan your site and take in information from text without much effort. Fonts on your website must be clear and readable. A typical rule of thumb you’ll see on the web is to keep your body text at least 16pt. That said, it largely depends on the type of font that you use. Sans Serif (without serif) are typically the best choice for online texts. As a rule, don’t use more than three different typefaces throughout your website. However, there might be a need of more than that, but if you do choose to use a variety of fonts, the overall effect should be harmonious, not cluttered.

Smooth And Easy Navigation

Having a professional website that’s tough to navigate is like owning an expensive copy machine that faces frequent paper jams. People will get irritated, frustrated and will simply bounce off. A lot of websites are still confusing, cluttered, and difficult to navigate, even though they look pretty. Starting with the navigation bar, you’ll want to make sure that you choose the right categories for it, ensure that you separate your product groups properly and don’t have too many categories. Also, make your navigation bar sticky. A sticky navigation bar means that it stays at the top of the screen no matter how far a user scrolls down.

Mobile Friendly

Let’s admit, mobile has become an integral part of our lives and a majority of people use their smartphones to access your website. So it becomes important to ask, what do my visitors see when they access my website on the go? That’s why you need to keep a mobile-first approach while designing your website, so that you can keep pace with the increasingly mobile world. If you take a look at mobile design trends over the last two years, you will notice a lot of attention is given to minimalism and simplicity of design. Put yourself into your users’ shoes, and test out every page, user action and button.

For developing a professional website, it’s important to keep these tips in mind. However, these are not the only things. There are a lot of other tips, tricks and thinking which goes behind developing a good website. Talk to our experts and discuss more on it.

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