The usability and usefulness, not the visual design, determine whether or not a website succeeds. User-centric design has become a standard approach for successful and profit-oriented web design since the page’s only user is the one who activates the mouse, so to speak. After all, if a feature is unusable, it’s no good.
We won’t go through the design specifics (e.g., where the search box should be placed) because they’ve already been covered multiple times; If we follow this approach, we will be limiting the process of perception. Instead, we should focus on the major concepts, heuristics, and methodologies for effective web design — methods that when used correctly may help us make more complex design judgments and reduce the time it takes to comprehend what’s being shown.
The Five Key Principles of Good Website Design
We must first comprehend how users interact with websites, how they think, and what common user behaviors are in order to apply the concepts correctly.
How Do Users Think?
In brief, the Web and a store are not that dissimilar for consumers. Users glance at each new page, scan some of the text, and select the first link that attracts their attention or seems to be regarding what they’re searching for. In reality, there are many portions of the page that they don’t even pay attention to.
The most common reason for a user to look up something (or find something valuable) and clickable is that they are seeking something new and appealing; when some promising options are discovered, users click. If the new page fails to satisfy end users’ expectations, the Back button is pressed, and the search process continues.
- Customers appreciate high quality and legitimacy. Customers will sacrifice the content’s design and layout if it is of high quality. This is why, over time, poorly designed websites with excellent information attract a lot of traffic. Content is more essential than decent design that backs it up.
- Users don’t read; they skim. Users look for certain fixed points or anchors on a web page in order to help them navigate the material of the page.
- Users don’t read; they scan. You can see how “hot” topics jump abruptly in the middle of sentences. This is a typical feature of scanning.
- Users of the Internet are impatient and demand quick results. The following is a very simple rule: if a website isn’t able to fulfill users’ expectations, it means the designer failed to do his job adequately, resulting in financial loss for the business. Cognitive load and navigational simplicity both have an influence on abandonment. The greater the cognitive load and the less intuitive the navigation, the more users are inclined to leave the site and look for alternatives.
- People aren’t always making the best judgments. Users don’t seek for the most direct method to obtain what they’re after. They don’t read a website in a straight line, moving from one site section to the next. Users opt for the first reasonable alternative, which is called satisficing. There’s a good chance that any link that appears to lead to the objective will be rapidly clicked as soon as it’s discovered. It’s difficult to optimize correctly, and doing so takes a long time. It is more efficient to choose the first reasonable solution.
Users want to be in control. They want to have complete control of their browser and trust the consistent data presentation across the site.
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