Science-based Web Design Tips to Crush Your Next Website Project

In the following, you will find some research-based tips and tricks on how to improve your web design.

1. Make Site Speed an Absolute Priority

It’s probably one of the least debated facts in the web design sphere that speed is important. Research has shown that it influences everything from bounce rate over user satisfaction to conversions and revenue.

2. Leverage the Fold

Whether or not there is still such a thing as the fold is part of a heated debate. Some say that because of the multitude of screen sizes these days, the fold doesn’t matter anymore. Others have a different opinion.

However, the fact is that even in 2018, people spend 57 percent of their time above the fold with a sharp decline afterwards. 74 percent of their time is dedicated on the first two screenfuls.

3. Take Advantage of Hick’s Law

Hick’s Law states that the more choices an individual has, the longer they will take to make a decision.

There’s actually a fascinating study on this phenomenon in which people in a supermarket were given more or less varieties of jam to try. In the end, those who had more choices were much less likely to end up buying some jam than the ones that had less variety to choose from.

4. Keep it Simple

Continuing with the theme of less, this also applies to your design in general. A huge study by Google has shown that visitors don’t like visual complexity. The gist: the more complex your design, the less it is perceived by visitors as beautiful.

5. Avoid Carousels, Sliders, Tabs and Accordions

Website owners love carousels. It’s probably one of the most client-requested features. Unfortunately, the research says that they are pretty useless.

One of the most mind-blowing data comes from Notre Dame University. The webmaster there noticed that the first slide on a carousel received almost 90 percent of the clicks while the rest were largely ignored.

6. Prioritize Scrolling Over Clicking

So, if you don’t compress information into sliders and/or accordions, how do you present it? The answer: just put everything in one long page, including the stuff usually tucked away. Seriously, it works.

7. Direct Attention with Visual Cues

One of the main functions of web design is to guide users. You can do that by giving different weight to different elements, thereby directing focus where you want it to go.

However, you can also use more direct visual cues to achieve this. One is by taking advantage of the fact that humans tend to look in the same direction as people they see in ads.

8. Use People in Pictures (But Avoid Stock Photos)

Besides using them to direct attention, including other people in images on your site is generally a great idea. Humans like to connect to other people, in real life as well as on the web. It’s why, for example, we have about pages on blogs.

9. Use the Right List Order

Using lists, both ordered and unordered, is a great way to make information more accessible. However, it turns out that here, too, human attention is fickle.

This is because of the so-called serial-position effect. It basically says that in a list, you are most likely to remember both the items in the beginning and at the end. The middle section, on the other hand, goes largely forgotten.

10. Leverage Social Proof

The last one of our web design tips is about the so-called conformity bias. This is the tendency of people to do as others do. That means, if a group of people approve of something, others are more likely to do that same.


CREDIT: https://torquemag.io/2018/07/web-design-tips/

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This tips if followed, are quite effective