Website Trends & Best Practice

To ensure that a website delivers your objectives, latest trends, and user experience best practice needs to be used to ensure the site remains in line with user expectations. Here are the top 3 key sections we believe you should focus on:

1. Best Practice Design

Bold colours: Whether it is the use of large blocks or more of a splash to highlight key areas of interest, bold, bright colours help grab the attention of your website visitors and showcase your brand’s personality. Finding the right balance is key to not to overwhelm the eye.

Large Typography: Like bold colours, large typography commands visitor attention and ensures your message is memorable and easily understood. Overly large typefaces can be used as graphic elements to add visual interest in place of imagery.

White Space: By removing any distractions or clutter, use white space, also known as negative space. This provides visual impact and emphasis on the most important elements of the page, such as the call to action. Clever use of white space can also help organise content and create a visual hierarchy on the page.

Micro-interactions and animations: Micro-interactions and animations can be used to intuitively guide users through your website, providing them with subtle visual cues, feedback on their interactions, and prompts to help them through their journey. They are a great way to improve the user experience by bringing the pages to life in an eye-catching and playful way.

2. Mobile First

Since 2016 mobile internet usage has surpassed that of desktop and now 54% of all website users are on mobile devices. In addition, Google has adopted mobile-first indexing for websites which means your search engine ranking could be affected if your site is not correctly optimised.

Creating a responsive website that adjusts to the size of a user’s screen isn’t optional anymore. Websites should be designed for the smallest possible screen and then scaled up to desktops to ensure the best experience for all users.

A simple way to see if a webpage on your site is mobile friendly is to run a free and simple test using Google ‘Mobile-Friendly Test’ https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly

3. Content is King

The user experience (UX) of a site is key in helping it thrive. However, even a brilliant user journey can’t compensate for a lack of good content. Content covers text, images, and videos – or anything that is used to convey messaging to the user.

Keeping it Personal: With increasingly busy schedules and users becoming more digitally savvy, the need to find relevant content quickly is critical. A website that delivers a high-quality, tailored experience rather than a broader, generic experience can help improve engagement and allow you to stand out from your competitors.

Make it an easier read: Using simple techniques like short sentences, chunking, and subtitles will make navigating the text on your site significantly easier for the user. It will also promote user understanding and if crafted by a copywriter can even promote conversion.

A picture is worth a thousand words: Studies have shown we remember only 20% of what we read but around 80% of what we see. Using images to supplement written text, infographics to explain information graphically, or video and animations to show rather than tell can all help to improve content engagement.

Video: If a picture is worth a thousand words it is said that one minute of video can equate to 1.8 million. Approximately 65% of the population are visual learners and recent users generally now prefer to intake information via video rather than copy. Website users have incredibly short attention spans so video can be used to create engaging experiences whilst also communicating information much quicker. It also contributes to promoting an appealing and personable brand personality.

Check out the rest of the Monitor website here to see us put best practices to use!