Essential Principles for Creating a Website That Succeeds
When building a website, you should follow several fundamental principles that are crucial for web development. Follow these guidelines to create professional websites with real potential for success.
1. Maintain Consistent Design
Maintain unified design elements throughout your entire website. Visitors should have the same overall impression regardless of which page they’re viewing.
This means using consistent typography, including sizes for headings and bullet points. Don’t combine too many different fonts—use one, two maximum.
Similarly, heading sizes should appear uniform so readers can easily scan each page. They shouldn’t have to hunt for the important information they came for.
Choose colors that facilitate reading and content consumption. Ensure sufficient contrast between text and background.
2. Design Intuitive Navigation
Navigation is one of the fundamental building blocks of a good website. Without usable navigation, visitors will struggle to find other pages, locate required information, or complete desired actions.
Keep menus readable and simple. Don’t overload your main navigation bar—some studies recommend a maximum of 7 menu items. If you need more links, use sub-menus.
Minimize the steps visitors need to reach their target page. The fewer clicks required to reach their destination, the better their impression of your website—and the more likely they’ll return. Studies suggest the 3-click rule as a maximum.
Utilize footer space for navigation links. The bottom of the page is now visited as frequently as the top. Readers often quickly scan pages from top to bottom, stopping at the footer before deciding where to go next.
Offer them direct access to important and frequently visited pages right from the footer.
3. Change Colors for Visited Links
In your CSS styling, don’t forget to define different colors for links users have already clicked and visited. This helps users make decisions about where to click next. When they see they’ve already visited a link, they can better decide where to go.
4. Optimize Content for Easy Scanning
When visitors arrive on your page, they won’t read everything in detail. They’ll first quickly scan to understand what the content covers. If they’re looking for something specific, they’ll search for mentions of that topic.
When designing page layout, remember to prepare proper content hierarchy. Identify which elements are most important for quick content overview. These are typically headings, but relevant images or icons also structure content effectively.
Use Shorter Paragraphs and Highlighting
Break text into smaller blocks. Long paragraphs with many sentences appear heavy and readers won’t even pause to read them. They’ll completely miss the content.
Important elements that should stand out need emphasis. These might be calls-to-action, clickable buttons, or even entire forms. Use appropriate color combinations to clearly emphasize each element’s importance.
Remember how people read text. The typical pattern is left-to-right and top-to-bottom for most Western audiences. That’s why many well-built websites use Z-pattern page structures. Another common approach is the F-pattern layout.
Align page elements to a grid. Using this technique simplifies content absorption for readers.
5. Check Link Functionality and Eliminate Typos
Even high-quality websites can be ruined by seemingly minor errors.
Users become frustrated when they click a link that leads to a non-existent page.
Or when an image fails to load because the source file doesn’t exist.
Similarly, numerous typos damage a good impression.
6. Offer Limited Choices
When you offer readers too many options, they typically choose nothing. When confronted with numerous possibilities, people are forced to overthink. This leads to indecision and less confidence in decision-making. You want to make decisions easier for your website visitors.
7. Encourage Reading Beyond Above-the-Fold
The visible top portion of the page loads immediately in the browser. That’s what visitors see first. It’s crucial that this area captures attention. Once visitors see the page addresses their topic of interest, they’ll begin scrolling down—but now more slowly, reading the provided information more carefully.
The top portion should be especially attractive content-wise. The message visitors receive is crucial for their continued interest in the specific page.
8. Use Descriptive Button Text
Avoid generic button text like “Submit” (form) or “Sign In.” Always use clear text that explains what will happen, what action is involved, and why visitors should click that button.
Labels like “Request Your Free Consultation,” “Get Your Solution Proposal,” or “Get Weekly Sales Tips in Your Inbox” are much more specific and have better chances of convincing readers to take action.
9. If It Looks Like a Link, Make It a Link
Prevent reader confusion. Often, some content elements look like links but aren’t clickable. This frustrates website visitors.
10. Ensure Mobile and Tablet Readability
Beyond large desktop monitors, numerous devices with smaller displays are now common. Obviously, these include phones and tablets. But also remember laptops and ultrabooks with smaller screens.
Ensure your pages display clearly on these devices and that content remains easily readable.
11. Test Your Page Readability
Until someone impartial reviews your pages, you won’t know if they’re truly readable and user-friendly.
Invite some clients and people unfamiliar with your industry to review your website.
Request their feedback. Let them browse and listen to what they say, what they complain about. Also note what advantages and strengths they see. Use this information to refine your website into an even more welcoming experience.
Create a Successful Website
The rules listed above aren’t complicated. They don’t require any special complex website features.
If you apply them during website preparation and development, you’ll create professional web pages that serve your needs and meet your expectations.