Navigation, Color Scheme & Hierarchy and More: Website Design Most Iconic Principles

Navigation, hierarchy, color choices and so much more, are all the fundamentals of website design. More importantly, those are the basics that determine both the usability and utility of a web page. And as you can see, it involves so much more than just an appealing look. 

Users nowadays would want websites to both satisfy their need for information thus visually pleasant to look at. Yet that’s not a simple work to put up with for website designers, especially beginners. Before we hop on any design trends that are blowing up lately, understanding all the principles are indeed vital. Let’s get to it!

1. The Simpler, the better.

When it comes to design, people always say “less is more”, and to us, it’s absolutely true. These days it isn’t hard to find sites that are overdone, packed with graphics and motion that doesn’t do anything with users' experience. Even though some of these sites look cool, however, it’s too distracting and hard with navigation. It confuses your users and simply will be out of style in the next few months. 

Simple, minimal yet effective design is totally different. A nice and neat design will make navigation so much easier, much more eye-soothing. Once your users feel comfortable and see that it’s convenient for them, they will stay longer on your site. And as that goes, we’re securing some decent bounce rate statistics as well as revenue. 

2. Navigation is your everything.

Navigation is all about allowing your visitors to interact directly with your site and search for what they need. The better your navigation page, the longer users will stay and the more positive result you get. As long as they find your navigation bar is too annoying or hard to understand and can’t do the job, they’ll leave. Since users can hop on a bunch of sites at the same time, they’ll be most likely to jump to another site to get what they’re looking for. 

Our advice is to keep your navigation simple, easy to understand, and straightforward. The quicker people and figure out what they’re doing on your site, the more advantages you’ll get from them. Especially with e-commerce websites, navigation is extremely helpful. How many times have you stumbled to the navigation bar or search bar to get what you want? We’ve all so that some time and your users would, too. You should also remember to keep its consistency on every web page, and that would never go wrong. 

3. Color pairing to inspire.

Along with navigation, color pairing plays an important role in website design and its positive impact. In other words, a good color combination attracts, a bad one distracts. Besides sticking to your brand color guideline, you should also pick a color pairing that generates a pleasant feeling. In fact, color can make a great impact on users' mood when they’re surfing the web. The complimentary color pairing will emphasize a balanced, soothing, and pleasing visual to your website. 

However, we also have to remind you to not use more than 3-4 colors in your entire website. More than that, it will turn out messy and distracting. Less than 3 you’ll be a bit boring and bland. Thus, consistency is a must to create a clear, inspiring website design. Stick and be loyal to a color palette from the beginning, you’ll see a much better website design later. This rule also applies to images that you’re about to put on your site. Choose the mood and color blend of your photography and stay true to that on your site. Consistency and great color choices never fail to inspire others.

4. Don't forget hierarchy.

To beginners who haven’t been around with design terms so much, hierarchy is how you arrange elements in your design to clarify their importance. As you might have known, users normally don’t read your entire page. They only scan for important information or for keywords only. That’s why we’ll always need to make designs that attract users' attention in important parts like a call to action, promotions,…  Sizing, color, contrast, space, texture, and style are all the details that made up your design hierarchy. 

To simplify it down for you, every design layout needs a focal point. This is where you display all the most important information, graphics, contents, or images. And without a strong and solid combination of many different elements, it’s hard to achieve that. But once you did, we’re so sure that users would be thankful and enjoy the experience they have on your website. 

5. Don't be distracting.

The greatest aim of website design is to always make users concentrate on all the good things a brand has, not getting distracted by graphics or visuals. Therefore, your entire website layout must be simple and be able to guide users to important information. The longer users stay, the better result you will have. The key is to make them submerge into your website and stay as long as they possibly can. 

To increase attention, you can also design your website to follow the natural eyesight and users’ behavior. Most people will scan in an F-base pattern, and this is the most comfortable track for a human's eye to move. From that, you can totally take advantage of it and design your website to follow that pattern. Thus, let’s not forget about loading time and the ability to work on many devices. Those elements affect users' behavior and you’d not want any distraction to happen, right?  

Navigation, hierarchy or color palette, and other elements are all the fundamentals that will follow your project to project. As long as you’re keeping all those principles, it’s not hard to see a strong improvement in your website design. If you want to learn more about website design, marketing, and everything about website development, we’re ready to help! Follow us for so much more blogs!