Top 10 UX Principles for Creating a Great Website
In this ever-evolving web design landscape, it can get difficult for designers to keep up with the changing trends. Designers aim to engage users with their designs but it is not possible without knowing what is trending and what works well.
By understanding some core UX principles, UX designers can develop user-friendly designs. can. Design principles shape the soul and heart of UX design and must be flawless
As a UX designer, you must understand the UX guidelines and align your web and app design practices with them. Collectively, these design principles build a solid foundation to deliver the excellent user experience.
What is UX Design?
User experience is defined as how users feel when they interact with a design.Users have different feelings when using a product. Similarly, users encounter different feelings when interacting with a design. UX design is the process of increasing user satisfaction by enhancing its accessibility, usability, and efficiency of a design.
Factors that Influence the UX of a Website
The core of creating a UX design is ensuring that users can easily find what you are offering to them. To offer your users a valuable and meaningful user experience, the information on your website should be:
Usable: Your content must be original and fulfill users’ needs.
Useful: Your website must be easy to use.
Accessible: Your content should be accessible to every user.
Credible: Users must believe what your website tells them.
Findable: Ensure your users can locate and navigate the content onsite and offsite.
Desirable: Your design elements should evoke encouraging emotions in your users.
1. Meet the Needs of Users
The leading UX design principle is to consider your users throughout the whole web design process. The term user experience itself says clearly that you need to focus on improving your users’ experience with your design.
As a UX designer, you should understand what your users want and design a user-centered product. It is possible that a design which seems great to you does not offer the desired experience to end-users.
2. Usability First
Since usability is a crucial factor in the success and failure of your product, UX design that you create for your website must solve the problems of your users. No matter how beautifully you have designed your website, users will not use it unless it is user-friendly and easy to use.
A website that is cluttered is likely to lose its visitors. As a designer, you need to make sure that each snippet, button, and icon of information has a purpose. Focus on the clarity of the website by providing only useful features to users’ notice.
3. Use Simple Language
Just like the simplicity that makes a visual design successful, UX-based content which is free from technical terms also enhances the usability of your website. Don’t forget that, your users are busy. They have no time to deal with difficult and technical terms. Hence, using simple and easy to understand vocabulary in your UX design make your site user-friendly.
4. Increase Accessibility
Always design a website keeping accessibility in your mind. A web designer must make sure that the design can be used by as many users as possible. Meaning your product must be accessible to people with limited knowledge, learning disabilities, and so on.
For example, you can use color contrasts on the background of texts. It will help the users with low-light setting problems and users with weak eyesight easily read the content on the screen. Also, try to remove barriers from the layout of design as much as you can, to ensure problem-free navigation.
5. Keep Minimalism-Less is More
An architect named Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, originally proposed the ’less is more ‘design principle. For UX designing, the major purpose of this principle is to reduce the cognitive and operational costs of the users. As a result, the consistency and usability of the design get improved.
The less-is-more principle is based on providing simplicity as opposed to over-decoration or clutter in a UX design.
6. Websites Should be Scannable
Users are busy and don’t read your website word by word, instead, they skim through it and pick important information only. So, you should focus on creating a scannable website design. In this context, visuals and infographics play a key role to convey information or the purpose of your brand.
A scannable web page will appeal to your users. For web users, maintaining credibility is essential which can be attained by using good content, high-quality graphics, and outbound links.
- Engaging and Interactive Design
Interactive design is vital to encourage users to perform different actions on the website. It informs users of the response for example when users click a button perform any task it provides them a response that their request has been received or being processed. In this perspective, the icons that users click to change their color, vibrate, and so on. The main purpose of the response is to give your users update on the actions, making an interactive web design will increase the chances of engaging website visitors.
8. Focus on Clear Hierarchy
In an era where users are impatient, hierarchy works as a secret weapon to ensure your users are finding what they want while encourages them to find more. It provides a roadmap to site visitors to easily navigate throughout the whole website. Most of the UX designers take the hierarchy of a design for granted, however neglecting this UX principle can lead to website failure. Hence, having a clear hierarchy is crucial to making design successful.
9. Consistency
Inconsistent user interface often results in leaving the users frustrated and requires extra effort from users to understand each page’s design. Consistency in web design means you need to ensure the design elements are aligned across the website.
10. Test Early, Test Often
This UX principle is also called the TETO-principle that UX designers should apply for testing the usability of each web design project. This testing provides an understanding of significant issues related to web layout. Testing the UX design not too early, not too late, and not for the wrong reasons is the main aspect of this principle.
Want to Deliver the Best User Experience?
UX designers need to create a sense of emotional touch when users use their web design products. If you have just created a user interface but not experience, chances are least to make your product successful. Aligning your design practices with these UX principles will multiply the chances of making your project successful. Have some ideas for designing a website for your business but don’t know where to get started? Seek help with an award-winning web and app development company like Applify Labs that delivers intuitive web designs with business-specific features.
