Web Design 101: A How-to Guide For Planning and Implementing The Best UX and UI | 2023

Usability. It’s the key to any successful website, and it’s not as easy as you might think. The reason why user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) are such important fields in web design is all down to usability for the viewer. Are there the appropriate pages flowing from the landing page to the payments for a cart page? That’s UX. Do you have a buy button that’s easy to find and click on? That’s UI. Want a big flashy red logo at the top of your page and music playing in the background? Just don’t. That’s always going to be bad UX and unless the aim of your website it to annoy people you’ve already failed.

Ask any company within a thriving business how one of their (not so) secret ingredients is having a strong website that’s easy to use, navigate and accessible. It’s no surprise that trailblazing sectors such as those who run or promote online gambling owe their success to having a top-notch website. Think about some of the most successful real money casinos in Australia: a simple site browsing exercise can prove this.

Get a designer to help you

While you might love certain color combinations, logo ideas, and fonts, a designer usually keeps on top of these things in their profession and can give you a better idea of what will work for a website. Getting together your set of colors, any logos, fonts, taglines, and calls to action should be your first step in planning out a new website. These will be the basis of the information on your site. A designer can help here. If you don’t think that you can afford design services, then don’t be afraid to get inspired by other businesses’ ideas. While some styles and color combinations are trademarked by others, a majority of the time you will be able to create something similar to someone else without any fear of repercussions.

Stick to a popular template

There is no need to reinvent the wheel. If you are developing a website from scratch in 2023, the easiest way to get something professional and to current standards is by using a popular template. This may be a WordPress template, if you’re using WordPress as your CMS, or a Wix or Squarespace design if you’re going the DIY route. While there are plenty of options available, picking a popular template means that your site looks modern and like the rest of the internet. While it’s tempting to do something bold and drastic to ‘stand out’, remember that you would rather be a little plain than turn people off your site.

Keep It Simple, Stupid

Less is more when it comes to your website design. It’s not about cramming as much information on a page as possible, it’s about enticing the viewer to perform some action. This action might be emailing you to book an appointment, getting directions to your store, or purchasing something on your site. You don’t want to overwhelm people, you just want to whelm them. A good way to start this process is by stripping all unnecessary words from your content, then creating an information architecture, with lower-level information put in sub-areas of the site.

Mobile-first design

How often do you look up a website on your mobile phone instead of sitting down to your computer or whipping out your laptop quickly? A majority of web traffic is now from mobile, which makes it more important than ever that your site looks good on mobile, too. Although it’s not exactly industry-wide advice, you may like to design your website from a mobile-first perspective. This means that you make your site look great on mobile before you make it look good on desktop, too. While most templates are responsive – which means that they ‘adjust’ based on whether someone is accessing them from mobile or desktop – some look better than others in this responsiveness.

Don’t forget law-based requirements

Getting sick of accepting or rejecting cookies all the time? Those cookie banners aren’t just to drive people mad, they’re actually required by law. If you’re collecting data from your website visitors, Most businesses that are using Google Analytics tools will require cookie consent banners to keep in line with regulations associated with the GDPR. There are other privacy laws surrounding online data collection around the world, but the GDPR is certainly the largest and most prominent and involves any business who might be serving a customer located in Europe. While cookie banners are pretty ugly and annoying, you can minimize their intrusion on a page and ease of selecting whether to accept or reject cookies.