Website design - The dos and don’ts from a team of experts

If you are looking to develop a new website for your organisation, or want to upgrade an existing site but are feeling overwhelmed in terms of design, we’ve pulled together our top dos and don’ts to help you. We’re an expert web agency and have built hundreds of websites for a huge range of different organisations, and wanted to share our knowledge with you:

Before you start designing, start with a plan. You need to map out the optimum user journey through your website and have a clear plan of each page and its purpose. Without this, you are likely to get lost in your own site, overcomplicating the journey and producing too many pages.

Your website is the digital space to invite in both your existing customers and your target audience. Keep this in mind before you start designing your site. What do you want your users to experience? What do you want them to learn about you as an organisation? How do you want your digital space to feel? What do you want them to be able to do on the site?

The best website designs harmonise with the main brand design and identity. A website is part of the suite of assets which carry the elements of design that you have set out in your brand identity and is a place that can really bring those elements alive. When a user is in your website, they should feel like they are in a virtual world that you have created where they can experience what it’s like to interact with you.

Too many colours, difficult to read fonts, an overload of content and too many pop ups can make for a stressful user experience.

If your brand identity has a range of colours within its palette, choose a small number to carry through to your website design. Use a leading colour or two and accompany those with accents to work subtly within photo or text boxes. An easy to read font in a colour which stands out from the design will make it easy and pleasurable for the user to absorb information.

Structure and hierarchy is also a vital consideration when designing a website. Ensuring your information is organised on the page via importance will help your users navigate and achieve their goals. Without a clear hierarchy users may become confused and frustrated leading them to leave your site pretty swiftly.

Animation can bring to life key messages and lift copy in certain places on your website. Animation can also help to navigate the user through your site in an engaging and memorable way. It can bring design elements alive and be used to replace otherwise mundane service communication and replace with something meaningful. However, context is important when it comes to implementing animations so think about your audience and whether or not the animations will support your storytelling. Like most things in life, less is sometimes more.

Website viewership on mobiles accounts for a large part of the platform base for users, meaning that this is a channel to seriously consider when designing your next website.

Spacing, flow, content density, navigation, imagery and load speed all need to be thought through when designing a mobile site. If you get this wrong, you are missing out on huge opportunities to reach your target audience. With less width on the page you will need to get creative and pragmatic with your design choices.

Breaking up copy, or integrating clear actions in the header and or footer of your website can help users to take the action you desire. It could be a booking function, a buying opportunity, donate, learn more or a contact us message. Whatever it is you really want your user to do on your website, make it clear and repeat it consistently across your website.

Less is more with website content. Use a professional copy writer to help you to distil your messaging and produce crisp, crafted copy that engages your audience. The average user tends to spend 2-4 minutes visiting a website on their initial visit, so make it count with easy-to-read copy and bold, engaging headlines.

If you are looking to design a new website and are stuck on what you need, we can help.

We are Olamalu, Drupal experts and experienced web developers. We’re a friendly and down-to-earth team based in West Oxfordshire, who work together to achieve brilliant outcomes. We’ve been developing websites and designing tailor-made tech solutions for a huge range of different challenges for over 15 years.

We work with many of our clients as an ongoing technical partner, but we also offer a consultancy service to solve a specific strategic challenge.