17 web design tips to create engaging web pages

Creating a good user experience is often the key to a product’s success. How many users will give a product or service a second chance if their first experience was a negative one? If you’re involved in creating a web page, it pays to design each aspect of the user experience so that your customers leave satisfied and delighted. Recently I have read a lot of interesting articles regarding Web design. Combining this information with our daily work in the UX design field at Apiumhub, we came up with a list of web design trends, best practises & tips. Call it as you want, the most important thing is that it works and bring outstanding results! In Apiumhub we believe that this list of web design tips could help you create memorable, clean, engaging and cool web pages. 

17 WEB DESIGN TIPS

1. CARD LAYOUTS

Website card layouts were first popularized by social media like Pinterest, Instagram and have since become a trend for content-heavy webpages. A card layout is best used on pages with lots of data that should be scannable.

2. LIVE PRODUCT PREVIEWS

Live product previews on home pages or custom landing pages showed great results in 2016 and promising to have even better outcome in 2017.

Let’s take the example of Slack’s product page. It features a video tour and vector graphics covering the Slack interface. These product previews are meant to give potential users an introduction into how the product operates.

Now, people prefer visuals over text. There are much more people who remember better pictures, videos than what was written in the same place. According to all research agencies, 2016 is a year of video boom and people claim that they better understand the product if they first watch a video rather than read explanation of how to use it.

Webydo is another brilliant example with a live animation playing on the homepage. This allows visitors to see Webydo in action without having to manually demo the product. But you don’t always need to rely on animations for product previews. Iconjar uses a simple PNG screenshot to show what the product is and how it works.

3. COLLABORATION TOOLS FOR DESIGN

Instant messaging and group chat are very popular now and brands go further than just using them internally. Banks, insurance companies and retailers incorporate instant messages to speak with their users as well as this is the fastest and easiest way of reaching people you are interested in. 

A new emerging trend is the ability to share live design documents within chat applications. Notable is one example where annotations and comments can be layered right on top of a document. This gives designers a clean way to share work directly with everyone on a team.

Slack is the most popular chat application at the moment which supports many similar features. The growing Slack user base has been adamant about creating extensions that greatly improve Slack’s capabilities & tie into other products like Hangouts, MailChimp, and even WordPress. Keep this web design tips in mind! 

4. PACKAGE MANAGERS

Digital package managers have risen so quickly that they’re practically a requirement for modern web development. Solutions like Bower and NPM can save a lot of time starting new projects.

5. UNIQUE WAY OF USING THE GRID

Curious Space’s website is a great example of adding a pinch of organic freedom to an ordered grid layout. When users see something unusual, it catches their attention and makes them remember your product and share it with friends or colleagues.

The goal of every business is to be different and have a unique touch. Grid gives you this freedom to come up with crazy ideas and make your website way different from your competitors’ ones.

6. CUSTOM – DRAWN ILLUSTRATIONS

Sites like Creative Freedom Guide, 2015 DConstruct Conference, or Ice & Sky all integrate custom-made, hand-drawn illustration work that greatly aid in telling their story and leaving a memorable experience for their users.

7. GREAT TYPEFACES

Google simplified our lives and launched its free cool font collection. It is an awesome solution especially if you have limited budget. With varying styles, weights, families, and the like, there is sure to be quite a few typefaces that are suitable for any website.

8. CINEMAGRAPHS

It enhances the desired mood for a website and gives it an additional layer of wonder, mystique, and elegance. Unlike videos, it won’t eat as much bandwidth, and unlike photos, it provides something more than a simple still shot. Now we see a growing demand in using cinemagraphs and leading designers love it. Well-known brands like Airbnb are big fans of cinemagraphs.

Here at Apiumhub, we use it a lot and our clients are very thankful for that; according to their research, their users love this design move. It’s one of the trendiest of this web design tips list. 

9. SEMI – FLAT DESIGN

Flat design has slowly transformed over the past few years to semi-flat design. Due to both Android’s and Apple’s releases using this type of style, designers started to use it more and more integrating depth and dimension through the use of subtle shadows, card, tile concepts, and well-thought out transitions to help guide and orient users. As design is going towards simplicity, semi-flat design became a good option for web design, which is why you can find it on our web design tips list.

10. PARALLAX

A couple of the websites mentioned earlier already utilize parallax on their websites. Parallax is a type of effect applied to the speed and movement of background imagery. Scroll For Your Health is a great example of a fun, interactive, and educational way to present information on different fruits, while using parallax. This method in designing is based on creating an illusion, which generally draws a visitor to scroll through the complete site.

11. LAZY LOADING

On websites that feed content continuously, lazy loading aids in viewing immediate website content without waiting for the entire page to load.
This is especially helpful for websites that are highly visual, such as Facebook, Instagram, or Pinterest. Lazy loading helps to simplify viewing of the content by loading only small chunks at a time.

12. WHITESPACE MATTERS

A clean concept of design refers to an overall look and feel that is visually pleasing and appealing. Within this, lies the concept of “white space” which offers sufficient space for all your elements to breathe or simply be easy on your eyes. Clutter is reduced in this way, and your visitors find navigation far easier and convenient. There is no better example of white space than google’s search page.

Whitespace is a fundamental building block of good design. It is one of the first thing any visual designer is taught. Used well it can transform a design and provide many benefits. Some of those benefits are purely aesthetic while others have a tangible impact on the effectiveness of your site:

• Increases legibility
• Higher comprehension
• Increased attention
• Excellent way of drawing the users attention to a particular screen element. To a non designer the most obvious way to make something stand out is to make it bigger. However often surrounding the item with whitespace can be just as effective.
• Can be a powerful way to communicate elegance, openness and freshness. Obviously this isn’t always the design look and feel you wish to communicate. However when it is, you cannot do better than having loads of whitespace.

13. BIG PICTURES

Most of the latest websites, especially those that are single page scrolling, are different to those that have traditional functionality. Along with using a big background image, all the elements on the site must be balanced. In this way, the background still stays prominent while all the buttons and text on the page are easily spotted.

14. SINGLE PAGE SCROLLING

Another of the web design tips I have to give you is to try single scrolling page. It simplifies your site and saves your users from having to load a new page every time they want to view a part of it. A single page loads once and has all that you need for showing to your customers.

15. VIDEO

High definition video is the new trend for header. According to many UX design experts, people like watching videos once they are on a home page, it catches their attention and gives better understanding of the product and the company.

In 2015, it was very popular to put videos of people working in the office, team, product features and in 2016 companies start to invest more money on video. Good examples are: y.co and hto.

16. KEEP YOUR NAVIGATION SIMPLE

When consumers land on your website they need to be able to find what they are looking for within two seconds. If they have to search any longer than that they are going to become frustrated and find another website. 
Keep your navigation menu as simple as possible. Too many options will overwhelm your visitors. You need to have a clear path to whatever action it is you want your visitors to complete, whether it’s a submission form or a specific destination page.

17. RESPONSIVE LAYOUT

Responsive design technology makes it possible for your website to be viewed on all devices, such as smartphones, tablets, desktop computers etc. Responsive design offer users an optimal viewing experience, and search engines rank mobile compatible websites much higher in comparison with websites that are not mobile friendly.

I hope this list of web design tips inspired you to come up with a fantastic web idea! Don’t forget that you constantly need to update your website, world changes very fast and design trends as well, try to introduce something new and fresh every year! 

If you have other web design tips you think could be interesting and a good add up to this article, let us know in the comment section!