{"id":19882,"date":"2018-10-26T08:01:52","date_gmt":"2018-10-26T13:01:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hostgator.com\/blog\/?p=19882"},"modified":"2019-06-05T13:30:25","modified_gmt":"2019-06-05T18:30:25","slug":"web-design-best-practices-guide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hostgator.com\/blog\/web-design-best-practices-guide\/","title":{"rendered":"Web Design Best Practices: A Helpful Guide"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Your website is the main face of your brand online. And <\/span>building your website<\/span><\/a> with best practices in mind will ensure your brand is putting its best foot forward. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What people see when they visit it influences how they see your brand online and off. And your web design largely defines how people experience your website.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In short, web design is important.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A bad web design can make your website layout look unprofessional, lose visitors\u2019 trust, or make it difficult for them to find what they\u2019re looking for (and therefore increasing instead of<\/span> reducing your bounce rates<\/span><\/a>). <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A good website design shows your visitors you know what you\u2019re doing and that it\u2019s worth sticking around and interacting with your brand.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whether you\u2019re working on a building new website or launching a re-design for the one you already have, there are a few important web design best practices you should honor.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"HostGator<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

1. Make Your Site Navigation Intuitive.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Part of the design process is figuring out how to organize all the pages and what to include in your <\/span>website menus<\/b>. Getting your site organization right is both<\/span> important for your website architecture<\/span><\/a> and because it determines how easy navigating your website is for visitors.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When deciding what pages, categories, and subcategories to include in your website\u2019s menus, think first about your visitors. What will make it easier for the average visitor to find what they\u2019re looking for? But also decide what the most important pages you want them to find are.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Strive to organize your website in a way that will make it just as intuitive to a first-time visitor as it is to someone who knows it well.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Maintain a Consistent Style.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

If you visited a website that had a specific style on the home page but changed to something completely different on the next page you linked on, you\u2019d find the change confusing. You might wonder if you were in the right place at all or had somehow navigated away from the site you thought you were on.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You don\u2019t want your site visitors to deal with that kind of confusion. Early on in the design process, sit down to develop a <\/span>web design style guide<\/b>. A style guide is a useful web design tool that will help you make sure all the pages on your website visually match well enough to let visitors know they\u2019re all related to each other as well as to your brand.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Make sure it includes:<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n