Mobile first

Mobile surfing has officially surpassed desktop, which means mobile design has to be your number one priority. Moreover, since Google has also shifted to a mobile-first index, websites need to be designed for mobile devices first.

Ditch large images, prefer smaller icons, strategically place calls-to-action, and design a UI/UX experience that is more convenient for mobile users.

Custom illustrations

The attention span of an average online user is now just 8 seconds. In comparison, the attention span of a goldfish is 9 seconds.

How do you capture someone’s attention — and successfully retain it for a reasonable amount of time — in a world where everybody is almost always distracted?

If you fail to do that, by the way, you may have a high exit rate, which may also impact on your website’s search engine rankings.

Custom illustrations may be the answer you are looking for.

Custom illustrations add an element of fun to your website. More importantly, they allow you to craft a memorable personality of your brand that you can use to craft your own corner on the web.

Using custom illustrations is also a trend for businesses that want to be perceived as more energetic, hip, and fun. However, if you have a more serious business, perhaps you can use subtle yet clever custom illustrations to make things lighter.

Bold, large fonts

Many web designers and online marketers consider that typography is the most crucial element of today’s website design.

Apart from a being a powerful visual tool, good typography also allows you to set your brand’s tone and convey a message. Furthermore, good typography also helps capture the attention of your website visitors and encourage them to go on, read the content you have worked so hard to get just right, and complete their journey in the sales funnel.

Poor typography, on the other hand, just turns people off and pushes them to another website — most probably to one of your competitor’s.

By using bold, large fonts, you will be able to retain more readers on your website for longer. This may not only help with better engagement rates and a possible jump in the SERPs, but it may also lead to more sales and higher a conversion rate.

A minimalistic design

If your website is super crazy and hip, you may ignore this advice. However, for everyone else, a minimalistic design may serve you better in most situations.

The rise of websites such as Medium and functionalities like Safari’s Reader View have wired online users to look for cleaner reading experiences. A minimalistic design not only helps you with matching that expectation, but it also enables you to capture your visitors’ attention, divert it to wherever you want to, and design a website that has fewer elements and, therefore, is faster to load.

The loading speed of a website is now an important search engine ranking factor. To generalize, if your website takes more than 1 second to load, search engines don’t like that.

You can also use other techniques, such as using particle backgrounds instead of video backgrounds, to create a lighter website. For more tips, read how to improve the loading speed of your website.

Familiarity and clarity

In the end, familiarity and clarity still matter — despite all the unique and creative techniques that you may try. Online users expect certain things out of a website, and you must meet those expectations.

Do the basics right:

• Make sure that clicking the logo always leads the user back to the homepage.
• Use icons and descriptions that the users are already familiar with.
• Remember the basic rule that a user must always get the information they want in just three clicks.
• Avoid drop-down menus.
• Don’t use more than 7 items in the menu, etc.

Conclusion

Website design has always been important. It is now even more important in ever before in fact. As search engines evolve and get smarter, they are putting more and more focus on user experience.

Without a good website design, nobody can provide a good user experience. A failure to do that may ruin your online reputation and reduce total sales.

Use the tactics mentioned in this article to create a more user-friendly and search-engine friendly website. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us.