Now, more than ever, an online presence is absolutely vital and a well-designed website can make all the difference to how your business is perceived by a wide audience. But what makes a good website design?
Where to start
A well thought out website is a great way to reach new and existing customers alike, letting them know what services you offer and how to contact you among other things.
We want our website to look good, but it is also really important that your website is accessible and easy to use. A good place to start is to think about what it is you want your website to do, whether you want it to be an information hub, a selling platform, an archive of work, or a combination of one or more of these.
You also need to decide if you want to try building your website yourself using a website builder or whether you want to use a professional service like the one offered by Athlone Printing.
Design elements to consider
What might be considered “good design” is perhaps subjective but there are some general rules for making your site both aesthetically pleasing and easy to use.
Try to keep colour themes consistent across the whole site and think about how the colours you choose might affect the legibility of your content.
It is also important to think about the fonts you want to use, particularly alongside your chosen colour palette, and how easy they may or may not be to read, especially for people with disabilities.
Add “alt text” for all your images as this makes your content accessible for people using screen readers.
Keep it simple
Keeping your website design simple and the navigation clear and easy to use is important for retaining visitors. If it is too difficult or confusing to find what they need people will simply go elsewhere.
Another good design practice is to use a palette of just a few colours based around your logo or brand, giving a clean and unified look that makes your website instantly recognisable as belonging to you or your company.
What’s important?
Something else to consider as part of your design is visual hierarchy.
This is the arrangement of the elements on your web page in order of importance. You can either do this by size, colour, imagery, typography or by how much white space you use. Using a visual hierarchy helps to establish a focal point for your page and shows users which is the most important information.
Time waits for no website
No one wants to wait a long time for your website to load so make sure you optimise all your images to help with faster loading.
Most people expect a site to load within a few seconds, if it takes longer than this they may go elsewhere!
Responding to change
A part of a good website design is ensuring that it is adaptable and accessible.
These days most people use phones or tablets to view websites so it’s vital to design your website to have a responsive layout. This means that no matter what device it is viewed on it will be able to adjust and still look great!
At Athlone Printing we offer a full web design and search engine optimisation service.
Through full consultation with you, we can create a website that will bring out the best in your business, helping you to grow and bring in new customers.
Go visit our website and fill out the contact form on our ‘Website Design’ page today for a free consultation to get the ball rolling!