Website design is creating an attractive, functional, and user-friendly website. A good website design can help you achieve your business goals, such as increasing traffic, conversions, and sales, So here we created this comprehensive website design checklist. However, website design is not a one-time task. To meet the needs and expectations of your target audience, your website needs constant testing, updating, and optimization.
Website Design Best Practices
- Know your audience: The first step in website design is understanding your audience and what they want from your website. You should conduct market research, user surveys, and persona creation to identify your ideal customers and their pain points, goals, preferences, and behaviours.
- Define your goals: The next step is to define what you want to achieve with your website. You should have clear, measurable goals aligning with your business objectives and audience’s needs. For example, do you want to increase brand awareness, generate leads, sell products, or provide information? Your goals will guide your website design decisions and help you measure your success.
- Design your layout: A layout is the arrangement of elements on your website pages, such as headers, footers, menus, images, text, etc. It would help if you designed your layout in a consistent, attractive, and functional way. You should follow the principles of visual hierarchy, balance, contrast, alignment, proximity, and whitespace to create a layout that guides the user’s attention and action.
- Choose your colors: Colors are important to website design as they convey emotions, moods, and messages. Your brand identity, niche, and audience should be considered when choosing colors. You should also use colors that contrast well with each other and the background to create readability and visibility.
- Select your fonts: Fonts are another important aspect of website design, as they affect the readability, legibility, and tone of your website. You should select clear, simple, and appropriate fonts for your niche and audience. It would help if you also used fonts that complement each other and your website design.
- Add your content: Content is your website’s core, providing information, value, and solutions to your audience. You should add relevant, engaging, and useful content for your audience. To improve your online visibility, it’s important to optimize your content for search engines.
- Test your website: Testing is the final step in website design, as it ensures that your website works properly and meets the standards of quality, usability, and functionality. You should test your website for various aspects, such as loading speed, responsiveness, accessibility, cross-browser compatibility, etc.
You should also test your website for errors, bugs, and glitches and fix them before launching your website. You can use Google PageSpeed Insights to test your website.
Website Design Checklist
Now that you know the website design best practices, let’s look at a website design checklist that you can use to create or improve your website. This checklist covers the following aspects of website design
- Site Functionality
- Web Content
- SEO
- Website Domain
- Marketing
- Cross Browser & Cross-Device Compatibility
- Website Loading Speed
- Website Responsiveness
- Website Accessibility
Site Functionality
- User-friendly navigation
- A search function
- Contact form
- Call-to-action (CTA) button
- Footer
- Favicon
- 404 error page
- Backup system
Web Content
Web content refers to the text, images, videos, audio, etc., used to convey your message and value proposition to your audience.
- Original, relevant, engaging, and useful for your audience.
- Well-written, grammatically correct, and free of spelling or punctuation errors.
- Formatted properly with headings, subheadings, paragraphs, lists, etc.
- Concise and clear and avoids jargon or technical terms
- Consistent in tone, voice, and style across all pages and platforms.
- Updated regularly with new and accurate information or products.
- Supported by relevant and high-quality images, videos, audio, etc.,
- Optimized for search engines (SEO) using keywords, headings, meta tags, images, etc.
SEO
SEO stands for search engine optimization, and it is improving your website’s visibility and ranking on search engines like Google or Bing. SEO helps you drive more organic traffic to your website from people who are looking for what you offer.
- Keyword Strategy
- Meta descriptions
- User-friendly URL structure
- An XML sitemap
- Robots.txt file
- Schema Markup
- Google Analytics
Website Domain
Website domain refers to the name and address of your website on the internet. It is important for your website’s credibility, memorability, and SEO.
- Easy to remember, spell, and type.
- It Should Reflect Your brand name, niche, or keywords.
- Top-level domain (TLD) extension
- Should Register with a reputable domain registrar
- Secured with an SSL certificate
Marketing
Marketing refers to your strategies and tactics to promote your website and reach your target audience. Marketing helps increase your brand awareness, traffic, conversions, and sales.
- Brand Logo
- Creative Tag line
- Useful Articles
- Website Newsletter
- Social Media icons
- Testimonials
Cross Browser & Cross-Device Compatibility
Cross-browser & cross-device compatibility refers to how well your website works and looks across browsers (such as Chrome, Firefox, Safari, etc.) and devices (such as desktops, laptops, tablets, smartphones, etc.). Cross-browser & cross-device compatibility ensures that your website provides a consistent and optimal user experience for all users, regardless of their browser or device preferences.
- The website uses web standards and best practices most browsers and devices support.
- The website avoids using features or elements that are incompatible or outdated with some browsers or devices.
Website Loading Speed
Website loading speed refers to how fast your website loads on the browser or device of your users. Website loading speed is crucial for user experience, SEO, and conversions.
A slow-loading website can frustrate your users, increase your bounce rate, and lower your ranking on search engines. A fast-loading website can delight your users, improve engagement, and boost conversions. Here are some items to check for website loading speed:
Website Responsiveness
Website responsiveness refers to how well your website adapts and adjusts to different screen sizes and orientations of your users’ devices. Website responsiveness ensures that your website provides a comfortable and enjoyable user experience for all users regardless of their device type.
- Consider using bullet points or numbered lists to make the information easier to read and digest.
- Include more visual aids, such as images or diagrams, to complement the text and make the content more engaging.
- Provide case studies of successful website designs to help readers understand how the best practices and checklist items can be applied in real-world situations.
Website Accessibility
Website accessibility refers to how well your website accommodates and supports the needs and preferences of users with disabilities or impairments. Website accessibility ensures that your website is inclusive, ethical, and compliant with web standards and regulations.
- Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)
- Semantic HTML
- ALT Text
- Captions or Transcripts
- Contrast Ratios
- Keyboard Navigation
Conclusion
This website design checklist has shown you the key aspects and steps of website design and how to create or improve your website.
Go Click On is a professional website development company in Melbourne that can create a stunning and responsive website for your business. To learn more about Click On and how it can help you with your website development needs, visit us or request a quote today.
We hope that it has been helpful to you. If you have any questions or feedback, please get in touch with us or leave a comment below.
