What makes a good web design good?

Putting together a successful Web site that is simple for visitors to navigate and encourages exploration is challenging. Understanding the interaction between a visitor and a website helps us design better websites. Web design is a complex art.

1: First Impressions

When a visitor first comes to your web site, you have a matter of seconds to capture their attention before they hit the back button, return to Google, and go to another web site. A good web site grabs a visitor's attention and gets them to stay on your site longer than a few seconds. This can be achieved in many ways, including:

• Making an impact in the form of welcoming text, an engaging call to action or thought-provoking question.
• A large and beautiful illustration.
• A good-size photo or photos.
• Whitespace around a particular element can bring attention to it in a dramatic way.

There are an infinite number of ways to instantly draw a visitor’s attention. What can your site achieve in under three seconds?

2: Aesthetics

After the all important first impression, come aesthetics – all the important little touches that go into the design of the website. Beautiful websites promote a professional feel that speaks volumes. Well-designed websites never look like cheap scam sites, they offer quality content, and justify the time spent on them. Badly designed websites are the opposite – they look cheap, offer little and show an owner who didn’t care enough to invest in the site. Aesthetics in website design is impossible to condense into a small part of a blog post, but here are a few good pointers:

• Attention to detail is very important.
• Choosing the right colour scheme can mean the world to the viewer.
• Textures can be used sparingly to add depth to a page.
• White space, when used properly, can bring out the best features of a design.

3: Design Functionality

The importance of a seamless user experience is often overlooked in web design. Sites that are difficult to navigate leave a bad impression and don't encourage an in-depth visit to your website or repeat visits. If a website is difficult to navigate or hard to use, visitors won’t explore further.

Just as with aesthetics, functionality is an endless landscape. Here are a few pointers:

• KISS - (Keep It Simple Stupid) - If you need to provide instructions, it’s already probably too hard to use.
• Keep it consistent - Users shouldn’t have to change their browsing behaviour to access your website.
• Have a smart visual hierarchy - Ensure you guide visitors through your website easily and obviously. Make sure they are led through the site in the right way, seeing all the things you want them to.

4: Content

While beauty, elegance or impact will encourage a visitor to stay and explore your website, good content will encourage a visitor to return. Fill your website with reasons to come back and visit!

5: Website Code

Professionally delivered, well-written code makes updating, expanding, and managing a Web site easy and quick. If your website is slow to load, update, or fix, the overall experience will suffer.