In a digital world, a website serves as a virtual business card, enabling brands and enterprises to furnish valuable details about their offerings while establishing connections with potential clientele. These online platforms are not just informative but can also serve as tools for lead generation, enhancing conversion rates, and contributing to overall success.

Nevertheless, the quality of websites varies significantly. A successful website must exhibit a well-thought-out design to fulfill its objectives, such as converting online visitors into paying customers. A finely crafted website will boast clarity, effortless navigation, and user-friendliness. Its design will captivate visitors, keep them engaged, and essentially guide them throughout their journey.

If you're in the initial stages of crafting your website, comprehending what attracts or repels visitors might be perplexing. Therefore, acquiring knowledge about web design practices provides a foundation for making informed decisions and avoiding design blunders. This blog post delves into the best practices adhered to by premier web design companies in New York.

The 4 Best Website Design Practices To Follow

Intuitive Navigation

Users develop mental frameworks of how websites operate based on their past encounters. Straying significantly from these frameworks can confuse users and make it difficult to locate what they seek.

Hence, the navigation system of your website—comprising the components that facilitate users' movement—ought not to be an area of innovation. It should be familiar and predictable to prevent confusing visitors and obstructing their quest for information.

Presented here are some of the best web design practices that you should follow for intuitive navigation:

Adhere To The 'three-Click' Principle

An instinctive navigation system is tailored to the preferences of its users. To that end, defining your visitors' ultimate objectives is imperative before crafting your website. Upon accomplishing this, your hired web design company must employ the 'three-click' rule to ensure that users can accomplish their objectives without any hassle.

This guideline asserts that users should locate desired information within three clicks of the mouse. If you encounter difficulties in this endeavor, consider implementing a mega menu, which can encompass more sections and subsections than a regular menu.

Implement Breadcrumbs

For websites with intricate layers, breadcrumbs can help prevent users from getting lost. This element showcases the sequence users followed to arrive at their current position within the website's structure. By presenting this navigational pathway, you help users comprehend the structure of your site.

Deploy A Hamburger Menu For Mobile Navigation

For optimizing mobile websites, consider simplifying your website header to encompass solely your logo and a hamburger menu icon (comprising three horizontally stacked lines). This prevalent tool conceals menus, thereby helping conserve screen space while providing seamless access to navigation options.

Utilize Clear Link Labels

Ensure that your links and category labels are simple and descriptive. They must communicate their purpose without confusion.

Strategically Position CTA Buttons

Whether the call-to-action (CTA) takes the form of text, an image, or a button, it's essential that a web design company in NYC places it in a prominent location that catches visitors' attention. This is one of the widely followed and best web design practices.

To make your CTA distinct from the surrounding content, opt for a contrasting color that's also used for other clickable elements.

Furthermore, leverage whitespace to direct the visitors' gaze and strategically place the CTA to capture their attention. Also, factor in the ease of clicking the CTA button, particularly on mobile devices.

Netflix's website exemplifies good web design practices. For example, the CTA buttons like "Get Started" and "Sign In" employ color contrast, different sizes, and negative space to attract the visitors' focus effectively.

Implement a Mobile-Friendly Layout

A significant portion of users accesses websites via their smartphones. Therefore, Google gives preference to websites with high-quality mobile versions. Given these considerations, optimizing your website for the small screen is crucial.

Tools such as Google's Mobile-Friendly Test offer valuable assistance in optimizing websites, but to fully capitalize on these tools, it's essential to understand the following points:

Thumb-Friendly Design

Interactions based on thumb usage are inherently less precise than cursor-based interactions. Consequently, buttons and other interactive elements must possess sufficient size (approximately 44 x 44 px) to be easily tapped with a thumb.

Opt for Easily Readable Fonts

Choose a font for your website's main text that looks good on compact mobile screens. Adjust it to a size of at least 14px (the recommended minimum size for body text) and assess whether the text remains comfortably readable. If not, contemplate switching to a more reader-friendly typeface.

Eliminate Unnecessary Visual Details

You must hide elements that could detrimentally affect site performance. Let me give you an example. As a healthy practice, you must avoid fancy animated effects on mobile devices. This is because they need more computational power and also function poorly on mobile devices.

Design With Accessibility In Mind

Website accessibility goes beyond being a mere optional feature. It serves as both an ethical and a practical necessity that’s helpful for users and businesses alike. The following are some suggestions for ensuring an accessible design:

Facilitate Keyboard Navigation

Certain users might encounter difficulties using a mouse due to motor impairments. To accommodate this, a web design company in New York must ensure that all interactive elements can be accessed and controlled using the keyboard's "Tab" key. This allows for a seamless experience for individuals who require keyboard navigation.

Ensure a Strong Color Contrast

Strong color contrast is imperative to ensure visibility for individuals with limited visual acuity. There are various tools available, like Webaim Contrast Checker, that help you check color contrast compliance.

Incorporate Alternative Text

Individuals with visual impairments rely on screen readers to process content on a website. Screen readers depend on alternative text to describe images and videos to users. Thus, it is crucial to include captions and alt text for images. Moreover, captions and video transcripts, or closed captioning, are indispensable for individuals with hearing impairments.

Conclusion

This blog covered 4 common web designing practices followed by companies in New York. But, if you are unsure how to adopt the best website navigation practices or the others mentioned in this blog, you can hire an NYC-based web design company. They possess the necessary expertise and can ensure your website creates a lasting impression on visitors.

Web Design Company in New York: https://www.unifiedinfotech.net/services/web-design-new-york/