How Well Does Your Website Connect With Users ?

Good website design is not only about how your website looks. It is also about how it functions and whether or not it achieves a desired goal. There is no hard and fast rule on how websites should be designed. Rather, it is important to determine who your target audience is and create your website to make a connection with that audience.

Design for story-telling

Website design should tell a story. You can achieve this by using a design layout that will enhance exploring. Your page content should be organized in proper narrative and progressive order. Use an eye-catching headline and then clearly communicate your company’s purpose and selling points (“value propositions”).

Appeal to emotion

Most human decisions are influenced by feelings, so a designer should not ignore emotions. You can use specific shapes, fonts, and icons that will make your audience feel a certain way about your product or service.

Look around at the branding of popular companies.  You will notice that they draw on human emotions to promote their brands. The font, layout, and colors that you select can elicit a certain emotional response from users.

A finishing touch

You want your design to be as people-focused as possible. This means that your site must be user-friendly. You do not want viewers guessing about what to do next. Your design should hold a visitor’s hand and guide people effortlessly through your site.

Ensure that all of the elements that require interaction are visible and click-able.  One way to do this is to make links and buttons (“call-to-action”) in colors that are different from the other content.

Your design layout needs to be consistent.  Otherwise, your users will slowly get detached as they navigate from one page to another, which leads to loss of trust, which leads to site abandonment.

Also, your content must be easy to read. In addition to its verbiage making sense, I’m also meaning that it should literally be easy to read.  Make sure that your text is a contrasting color to the background so it won’t blend in and be hard to read.  And choose a font that is easy to read.

It’s good to have a beautiful website with the latest bells and whistles, but the real challenge is to ensure that it resonates with your target audience.