Some say it is the design a website needs. While others say, design has nothing to do with the performance. It is the development side which needs to be focused more. But both of these are correct. If you need to make your website user- and search engine-friendly, you need to follow both of these ways i.e. make the web design and web development up to the mark.
I’m not going to discuss web development here. The only thing under consideration is web designing. Below are some web designing tips NOT to follow while designing a website. And if you’re not designing your website on your own and going to outsource web designing services, these web designing tips are still helpful.
Don’t Make The Font Size Too Small
Although web experts and search engines have been pointing this out for long, still there are some web designers use too small size for fonts. Back in days, web designers use 12px and that became a standard. But as the time passed, people start realizing that 12 is not just enough. Not everyone will be reading from a distance of less than 24 inches. Keeping this in mind they changed the trend. As for then they set 14px as the minimum font size. And some even made 18px as the minimum size. Hence, no set standards.
What made those web designers and expert change the old fashioned way, are:
- Catchy headlines with eye catching font size
- Font size of the content in the body must also be in readable form, with prominent font size
- Interesting and informative content is what readers are looking for. If the size is kept too small, readers will lose their interest.
As per a study made in 2013, 8 seconds is the average time to grab attention. If the content is too small, don’t expect your viewers to stay on your page. Then the same study tells us that on an average people read only 28% of the total content on the website. These results led to this change of trend for the font sizes.
After this change what font size some of the websites follow, are:
KISSmetrics
- Headline: 35 px
- Footer: 15 px
Vero
- Headline: 41 px
- Body: 18 px
One more thing to keep in mind, 16px Arial size is different from 16px of Calibri. So don’t just stick to the font size mentioned here. But make your own judgments.
Low Contrast Fonts
Another mistake some of the amateur web designers make is using a font color, which doesn’t blend in with that of the page color. It gets harder for anyone to read text with color that doesn’t contrast with background color. If the web page color is light, make the font color dark and vice versa.
When designers use low contrast colors for text, it gets hard to read and the reader skips the important content or may even exit that website.
Don’t Make The Lines Too Long
I’m not talking of the lines in MS Word but the lines of the web content. The Baymard Institute recommended an ideal line length must not go beyond 60 characters. But if necessary, the length can go around 75 characters a line.
For many, long lines seems as a threat. And just by looking at them, they quit reading. Make it short to make the reader interested. But at the same time, if the line length is too short, readers will get annoyed and might leave your website.
As per The Baymard Institute, a perfect line length with font size 18px is 65 characters.
It isn’t hard for any web designer to make a website as smart and attractive as possible. But they usually misses the point, and just make it quick to put the burden on clients shoulder. There you, being the reader (or the web designer), need to be smart and think like it is your own website. And this will make your website pretty attractive.
Conclusion
Now you’ll be wondering “what is new in this, I already knew all this”. Well if this is what you think, you’re pretty awesome and updated. But if you’re not, you haven’t wasted your time.
If you’re a web designer, you must follow all these web designing tips and all the others, which makes your website stand apart from the crowd. And if you’re a client, you have to make sure that the web designing services you’re availing, follow all these web designing tips and also the others like these.
Grab more web designing tips before you outsource web designing services.
