10 Principles Of Good Web Design


Updated on: 29/06/23


A website that attract and converts online audience to paying customers is the dream of every business. But designing such website demands paying attention to the principles of good web design. In fact, it demands knowing more than how to use various web design tools and framework.

And while modern website builders have made it possible for almost anyone to create a website, but if you want a custom and outstanding website for your business, you need a professional web designer.

But when we talk about good web design, what are we talking about? Are we talking about beautiful website with amazing layout, creative designs and graphics? Those are not what good web design is all about.


Then that we have define what a good website is, let's proceed to the principles of good web design. And whether you're building a personal website or business website, these are guidelines or principles you should pay keen attention to.


The Top 10 Principles Of Designing A Good Website

While there might be many principles of designing a good website, below are the top 10 principles to follow if you want to build an outstanding website for your business or company.


1. Quality Copy

The foremost principles of good web design is quality copy. In order to attract visitors to your website or webpages, your website copy should be concise, relevant, persuasive, and informative. It should be able answer user’s questions as well as give coherent information about your business, products, and services.

Note: people don’t visit a site to admire the design; they visit to get information. Ensure that your site has the information your audience are searching for.

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2. Easy-to-use Navigation

Second to quality copy is easy-to-menu or navigation. You can't separate easy-to-use navigation from a good website. No matter how beautiful a site might be, if users don't know how navigate around it; it's worthless.

So, when designing your navigation, ensure to categories you menu items based on what users are conversant with. For example, people expect to find menu at the header area of a website, so putting it in the middle or at the bottom will be a bad user experience.

Also, if you're using a mega menu, ensure to reduce the total number of actions required for users to reach a destination. A three-click-rule should be fine.


3. Accessible Contact Information

Your contact information (email, phone number, and address) should be clearly visible on your site. User doesn’t have to struggle to find your contact details.

Also ensure that your contact details are text and well as clickable. This makes it easy for people to easily to copy it and contact you easily.


4. Responsiveness

With the ever-growing number of mobile users, a good website must be responsive to any device. It should work perfectly on any device size - desktop, laptop, and mobile.

Responsive design is so important in the sense that it's adaptive to various devices - desktop, tablet, and mobile. And when you own a responsive website, there's no need for creating mobile and desktop version of your website.

Responsive website also improves users experience and SEO ranking.


5. Strong Visual Hierarchy

The better your site’s visual hierarchy, the easier your contents will be consumed. Using grid layout is one way to build strong visual hierarchy. It also helps organize your site's information in sections, which improves users’ experience. Gird layout also makes it easier to for users to navigate through various sections of your website.


6. High Quality Media

Humans are visual driven, what we see has a significant impact on our choices and judgment. We perceive beautiful things as being better, regardless of whether they are actually better. Using high quality images and graphics for is not just good, but very essential.

Media contents (graphics, images, and videos) play a vital role in user engagement and conversion. It also helps improve readability. So ensure high quality and appropriate media content for your website.

7. Friendly Colours

Colours hugely influence what we remember and how vividly we remember them. Certain colours evoke certain emotions. For example orange evokes happiness while blue can symbolize trust. Proper use of colour is what defines a design whether website, graphics, or any design.


8. Readable Fonts

No matter how great a design might be, if the used font isn't readable readable, the design is worthless. Ensure to choose font that are visually appealing and readable.


9. Consistency

While jumping on the latest design trend might look cool, consistency is better. Maintaining consistency is the bedrock of building a good website or digital product. It's also critical to building a site that stand among competitors. Inconsistent design on the other hand is a sure way loosing credibility and customer’s royalty.


10. Simplicity

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. Having too many elements on your webpages is distracting and can lead to low conversion rate. Ensure to keep your design as simple as possible so that users can easily navigate through your site.

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