Effective DIY Tips for Optimising and Improving Your Web Design

If there's one thing you probably know already, it's how crucial the design of your site is to your online presence. But did you know that a well-designed site can actually boost engagement, enhance your company's credibility, and drive revenues?

In this guide, we'll walk you through how to optimise and improve your website design for the benefits mentioned and more.

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Keep It Simple and Intuitive

When thinking about your website design, the first thing that might come to mind is its appearance. However, whilst it's a vital component, website design encompasses more than just aesthetics.

Keep this in mind - people visit your site for its content, not its look. Prioritising simplicity and intuitiveness is the way forward.

Keep your design clean and clutter-free to prevent visitors from feeling overwhelmed. Use plenty of white space, present your information in an easy-to-read format, and maintain consistency across your site.

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Visual Hierarchy: Make Important Content Stand Out

Visual hierarchy refers to the arrangement or presentation of elements in a way that implies importance. In other words, it determines which elements your visitors will notice first.

Utilising visual hierarchy in your website design can help guide your reader's eye to the most crucial information.

How do you utilise visual hierarchy? Size and colour matter. Larger and brighter elements will draw attention, while smaller or duller ones tend to blend in. You can also think about spacing, textures, contrast, and more.

Remember, the goal is to guide your site's visitors towards the actions you want them to take.

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Make Navigation Easy and Consistent

A site that's difficult to navigate can be a real headache and is likely to prompt visitors to leave. It's absolutely essential to make your navigational elements straightforward and consistent throughout your site.

This means maintaining a similar layout on every page, so users always know where to look for the information they need.

Creating a clear, hierarchical navigation menu is a must. Organising your content into categories can help your visitors find what they're looking for, improving their overall experience on your site.

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Embrace Responsive Design

Responsive design is the method of designing a website so that it scales and formats itself automatically to the screen size on which it is viewed.

This means that whether someone is viewing your site on a mobile device, a tablet, or a large desktop screen, it will still look and function properly.

Why is responsive design so important? Well, with the rise of mobile internet usage, more and more people are accessing websites through a variety of different devices.

If your site doesn't work well on all of these, you risk losing potential customers. Embracing responsive design isn't just about looking good—it's about accessibility and inclusivity too.

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Prioritise the User Experience

You've probably heard this time and again, but here it is once more because it’s critically important - user experience (UX) should be the backbone of your website design optimisation strategy.

"Good UX is the cornerstone of a successful website. It's all about how your users interact with your site, how easy it is for them to navigate, and how intuitive your design is. It's the factor that can make or break your online presence."

Making your site easy to navigate is one of the most effective ways to boost UX. Keep your site simple, clear, and free from clutter.

Above all, ensure that your users can find their way around your site swiftly and that they can locate what they're looking for without having to go through hoops.

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Optimise for Mobile

In the world of today where smartphones have become indispensable, optimising your site for mobile is non-negotiable. As a matter of fact, according to Statista, over half of the global web page views come from mobile devices.

"If your site isn't optimised for mobile, you're not just turning away a massive chunk of potential visitors - you're also negatively impacting your site's SEO rankings. Google has a Mobile-first index, which means that your mobile site is crucial to your ranking."

In essence, having a site designed for mobile use means your text is legible without zooming, your site does not require horizontal scrolling, and menus and buttons are appropriately sized for mobile users to interact with easily.

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Speed Matters

Lightning-fast site load times are invaluable. Web users are impatient and a slow-loading site spells disaster for your engagement rates. If your pages take more than a few seconds to load, users will likely leave and probably not return.

To combat slow site speeds, consider optimising your images, leveraging browser caching, and condensing your code, to name a few strategies. There are also a number of tools that can help you check your site's speed and give insights into improving it.

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At the end of the day, the key to optimising your website design is to put your user's needs first.

Easy navigation, mobile optimisation and fast load times all add up to create a user-friendly, effective site.

Remember, the better your site design, the more users it will attract, the higher your engagement, and by extension, the larger your business growth.