If you work in real estate or interior design, then part of your job is to keep up with the latest trends and preferences of customers. In the same vein, doctors and nurses have to continually keep up with new information and developments.
Web design is no different. Tactics and norms go in and out of fashion, and sometimes, change completely. But for someone who owns and operates a business, they aren’t likely to keep up with these trends.
So we’ve collected a few important ones right here. If you apply them in a new or website redesign, your website should be ‘levelled up’ compared to where it started.
Negative and Clean Space
If you get a chance to in to a newsagent and pick up two magazines. One should be low priced, perhaps a ‘gossip’ or ‘weekly’ style magazine. The other should be a higher end, monthly magazine, around $15 per issue. Contrast the layouts of the two.
The more expensive, premium product will use much more white space, cleaner layouts and leave deliberate gaps and not cram every spare inch of space with content or advertising.
Using this principle on your website can drive very real benefits for browsers searching for information, as well as improving the overall ‘feel’ of the site.
Kill the Pop Up
How many times have you subscribed to a website or business after a pop-up has appeared while you were looking for something or reading? If you’re like the vast majority of people the answer to that question will be ‘never’. So why would customers be any different?
At some point, these annoying, intrusive pop-ups became all too common and took up screen space as soon as someone clicked on a website. It’s not good practice. Configuring your pop ups to only appear to browsers who’ve clicked on 3-4 pages or spent a certain amount of time on your website is a good middle ground – that way, you’re only offering the chance to sign up to those who have already demonstrated a clear interest in learning more about you.
Pair All Content
This is a simple rule of thumb to work with, and borrowed from the print world. Newspaper articles that had pictures accompanying them got more interest and interaction. The same is true online. So as a rule of thumb, it’s a good idea to pair every piece of writing with a relevant image, and vice versa.
Don’t fall into the trap of using generic, pre-packaged stock photos; they’re easy to spot and take away from the overall professionalism of your site. Using images of your offices, staff, or graphics / cartoons / diagrams designed for you is a little harder to put in place than a stock photo, but well worth the effort.