How can you Improve Website Design Standards and Usability?

1. How can you Improve Website Design Standards and Usability? Planning to create a new website for your business or re-design an existing one? But before you start with the designing of your website, understanding design standards, and usability is essential. Why? With more than billions of websites, your website needs to be exceptionally crafted to attract users in the era of digitization. This is only possible when you know and follow the current website design standards and usability guidelines. When designing a website, most of us get hung up on the aesthetic appeal. An aesthetically pleasing website is important. However, you need to think beyond just how your website looks if you want to increase brand awareness and focus on lead generation. Your website need to ensure two things- ● Usability- How easily your website can be used ● User Experience- How much your audience will enjoy interacting with your website's design Thoroughly understanding the do's and don'ts of usability and user-experience will take extensive research and years of studying. We're here to save you from burning the midnight oil.

2. We've assembled a list of well-researched website design, user experience and usability guidelines that you can apply for your next website launch or re-design. You can also discuss these guidelines when you hire a Web Design Agency Toronto for your next project. Let's get started. 8 Website Design Standards and Usability Guidelines 1. Focus On Simplicity Remember why people are coming to your website- get information or complete some action. Website aesthetics are undoubtedly important, but they're not going to stay on your website to evaluate how elegant your design is. Eliminate unnecessary and non-functional design elements. Looking from a user perspective, make simplicity your best friend. Intricate and complex designs will only overwhelm your user, and they'll be unable to accomplish their task. Here's a simple checklist you can follow or instruct when you hire a web design company - ● Colours- Set your limit within 5 shades. Don't use extensive colour palettes. You can utilize your brand colours. ● Typefaces- Use a legible typeface. Your user shouldn't struggle reading your text. Keep the text colour minimal and ensure it contrasts with the background. ● Graphics- Utilise graphics that'll help your user complete a task or perform a specific function.

3. 2. Implement A Visual Hierarchy Visual hierarchy means you need to organize and arrange your elements in a flow that the users naturally gravitate to the most vital components first. The most commonly used trick for implementing hierarchy is using a combination of a bold, catchy and meaningful headline with a relevant CTA button. The hierarchical structure should make it easy and drive your users to complete the desired task. However, it should feel enjoyable and natural. You can adjust the placement, colour and size of specific elements or structure your website in a way to draw your users' attention to those important elements. Explain the benefits you offer your users to your hired Web Design Company Toronto, for designing a visual hierarchy. 3. Plan Out An Intuitive Navigation When you implement an intuitive navigation strategy, you guide users to find what they're looking for. You need to stimulate the instinct of the user. The user should automatically know where to click to accomplish his task or get the required information. Generally most expert Web Design Agency Toronto follows these few tricks for designing excellent navigation-

4. ● ● ● Keeping the primary navigation structure simple (especially near the top of your page). In the footer of your site, include navigation. Except for your homepage, consider utilizing breadcrumbs. This helps users to remember their navigation trail. Place search bars near the top of your website or web pages to offer your users easy keyword search. However, stick to simplicity. Don't include too many navigation options per webpage. Include links within your webpage copy, and make it clear where those links go. Arrange your site pages like your pyramid- homepage at the top, each linked page from the previous creates the next layer. Don't make your audience dig too deep. Use a maximum of 3 layers. ● ● ● ● 4. Maintain Consistency Keep the overall look and quality of your website consistent across all your webpages. Colour schemes, background, typefaces, and even the style of your writing should be consistent. Maintaining similarity in these styles have a positive impact on user-interface and usability. But that doesn't mean every page will have the same layout. Try to design different layouts for specific web pages. All your informational pages should follow a consistent layout style, while your contact pages should follow another design style that is consistent throughout your website. You'll make it easier for the user to predict or understand what information they'll find on a particular page. Consistency helps to design better social media campaigns. Your hired Social Media Agency can utilize similar design elements and layouts for strategizing social media campaigns. Consistency improves brand identity.

5. 5. Ensure Responsivity Research suggests that 48% of internet users accessed web pages through their smartphones or tablets. More than 90% of the users leave a website because of unresponsive web pages. The bottom line? Your website must be compatible with various devices your audience is using. This concept is known as responsive web design and is crucial for providing a truly excellent user experience. Your website should be flexible enough to automatically resize and reshuffle for fitting the dimensions of any device your audience uses. Apart from the device-friendliness, it's always great to test cross-browser responsivity, be it Chrome, Firefox, Microsoft Edge, Safari, etc. 6. Make Your Website Accessible To Everyone Design a website that can be used by anyone and everyone, including people with disabilities. Your Web Design Company and Social Media Management Company should think of these users in their UX design plan. Accessibility of your website applies to entire structures, web page format, content (both written and audio-visual).

6. According to standard guidelines, your website must be- ● ● ● ● Perceivable- The users are well-aware of your site content Operable- Your website should offer functionality in different ways Understable- it should be easy to understand all contents and alerts Robust- users should be able to operate through your website using assistive devices, technologies, and browsers. 7. Strike A Balance Between Conventionality And Originality One of the biggest challenges in web-designing is maintaining a balance between originality and user expectation. Most of us are extensive internet users, and we've become accustomed to certain conventions. For example- ● Navigation bar either at the top or left side (primarily for mobiles and tabs) of the webpage Logo in the center or top-left Clickable logo redirecting the user to the homepage Links that change colour on hovering your cursor over them Shopping cart or shopping bag logo on an e-commerce website with a number tag denoting the number of items in the cart/bag. Similarly, a heart-shaped or star-logo for accessing wishlist. ● ● ● ● ● It would be a blunder to discard these standard or conventional elements for the sake of uniqueness. Express your unique style within the limits of conventionality. It's similar to how to identify a physical medical store, grocery store, or jewelry store. If your hired agency for web design and social media marketing, Toronto doesn't apply these basic conventions users might feel lost, uncomfortable, or even frustrated. 8. Make Sure Your Website Is User-Centric When you design a website or state your requirements to a Web Design Agency Toronto, ask this question to yourself- who are you designing the website for? Ultimately usability and user-experience depend on end-user preferences. So, while the guidelines elaborated in this list are an excellent starting point, the final step to improving your website's design is conducting user testing, collecting feedback, and implementing changes based on what you've learned.

7. Create A Design That Puts Users First Web design is a subjective element- the website's look and functionality will not satisfy 100% of the users. However, when you implement these guidelines, you help users feel more at home. Ensure your hired Web Design Company Toronto knows and understands these guidelines. Contact Us Company Name: Chameleon Digital Media Address: 667 King Street West, 3rd floor Toronto, Ontario, M5V 1M9, Canada Phone: +1(416) 644-8597 Email id:info@chameleondigitalmedia.com Website: https://www.chameleondigitalmedia.com/