The principles of effective, knockout web design | The Giles Agency

Your website is one of the most important elements of your brand identity.

Potential clients, customers and collaborators often judge whether or not they’ll be working with or purchasing from you based on your web presence alone. Your site gives you an unrivalled opportunity to present exactly what you’re about – in a way completely tailored to your objectives. 

The very best and most effective websites have one thing in common: they are all thoughtfully, proactively designed with the user’s needs in mind. What does the user want and why? How can you best provide it… and why are you the best organisation to do so?

To design a website that covers all of these considerations and more, ensure that your site is…

Clear and logical

Simple is often best. If someone comes to your site wanting to find a specific piece of information, it’s crucial to leverage that pre-existing motivation and present a clear, logical pathway for them to follow. Avoid ‘over-designing’ a site and adding excessive information or gimmicks at the expense of clarity. This connects strongly to the importance of User Experience (UX) and UX Design. Most website projects will start with user profiles and journeys to determine the importance of specific content, based on why the user has come to the site and what they wish to leave with. If you get the UX right, your site won’t have excessive design or useless content – it’ll only contain exactly what it needs.

Seamless and consistent

It may not always register consciously in the mind of the reader, but ensuring that all paragraph and header styles, colour schemes, spacing, and other branding elements are consistent and in-line with your brand guidelines promotes a feeling of seamlessness and professionalism.

Mobile-friendly

Mobile browsing accounts for roughly half of all internet activity worldwide. It’s incredibly irritating to access a website on your phone only to find that it’s poorly optimised for mobile. Nowadays, it’s essential to make sure that your site is readable and effortless on any platform or device; remember, the number of potential eyes you’re luring in by being mobile-friendly is far from insignificant.

Appealing to the eye

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder – but if you’ve ever tried to read passages of white text from an aquamarine background, you’ll understand that keeping your readers’ eyes happy is key to success. Studies also show that we largely focus on the centre of the screen. Positioning especially effective and important content front and centre is thus a great way to harness this and entice readers to dive deeper into your content.

Quick to load

Consumers are becoming less and less tolerant of longer load times and delays. Google apparently aim for load times of half a second or less and, if your site takes more than three seconds to load, surveys show that a whopping 57% of people will grow bored and leave. You may have the most beautiful design and targeted copy possible, but if your site requires consumers to be patient, you’ll lose large chunks of your audience before you even get a chance to ‘speak’ to them.

Need help?

If you’re looking to revamp your website or take your online copy to the next level, contact us on enquiries.hk@gilesagency.com to see how we can help you achieve your goals.