By Editorial Team When designing your website, consider being more conscious of how your users will interact with it. That way, you can consistently create a positive website experience for them.
If you’re interested in adopting that user-centric web design experience for your users, this article will cover some of the best practices you can do.
What is User-Centered Design?
Before anything else, let’s briefly cover what is a user-centered design in the first place.
According to Sytian Productions Web Design Philippines, a user-centered design is about creating something for more than just aesthetic appeal. It’s also about making sure that every inch of your web design keeps in mind the site’s comfortability and practicality based on the user’s perspective. You prioritize the needs and preferences of the end-users over your choices.
The web design experience cannot overstate the importance of user-centered design. By putting the user at the center of the design process, end users will be more comfortable using your website, so they’ll use it for a longer time.
Creating a user-centric web design experience isn’t something that you can whip up yourself out of nowhere, although there are some standardized web design practices that you may already know.
If you want to be extra sure, consider doing things like user research, creating personas, and conducting usability testing to gather insights and feedback from real users. That way, you’re building a user-centric design rather than guessing which ones work for them and making assumptions about their understanding of your web design intentions.
Since you now know what user-centric web design is, it’s time to cover some of the best practices that go into it.
1. Conduct a thorough User Research
As mentioned earlier, thorough user research is one of the most essential parts of creating a user-centric web design experience.
Since the point of your user-centric design in the first place is that it’s more about your users and less about your biases as the designer, it makes sense that you get the insights of your users directly. User research is one of the ways to do that.
It’s a great way to gain valuable insights into what your target audience is looking for in the web design instead of assuming.
User research involves gathering data through various methods such as surveys, interviews, usability testing, etc. You can choose one or do them all if you prefer. After you finish, though, you still need to analyze the results of this research so that you can glean the right insights from it.
Also, pay special attention to your questions, as wrong user questions can lead to inconclusive results that don’t help you in your design process.
2. Make it Accessible
Accessibility in web design isn’t something you should do as an extra. Nowadays, it’s a requirement for a gratifying web experience for anyone and everyone. When you make your web design more accessible, it’s also going to improve the user experience for all.
When you make your website accessible, you remove barriers that might hinder users from accessing your content or completing desired actions. Investing in inclusivity will be helpful to everyone involved while making sure no one is
There are design principles and standards that are normal across the web design industry to make it easier for web designers to comply and improve accessibility.
Thus, if you need help, consult these design accessibility standards like the ones the World Wide Web Consortium or W3C makes.
3. Utilize Clear CTAs
Clear calls-to-action or CTAs will be crucial to create a positive user experience on your website.
If you don’t know what they are, CTAs are prompts of some kind or of different forms on your webpage that persuade your target audience or web users to do an action you want them to take when they’re on your site. For example, it can be you prompting them to buy if you’re an online store, or it could be you encouraging them to sign up for your newsletter.
CTAs usually come in the form of a button on a web page, so you want to make sure that your CTA stands out from the rest of the content That way, users know the next step you want them to take.
through this users will know the next steps you want them to take.
Another way to make your CTAs clear is by making sure you only have one goal per webpage. Otherwise, it can affect how effective your CTAs are.
4. Keep it Simple
A minimalistic web design isn’t just an aesthetic choice. When you have a simpler web design approach, it will be straightforward to use your website, no matter what one’s proficiency in tech may be.
Even if you don’t think your extra design elements are all that complicated, the same doesn’t necessarily apply to other people. For example, people who aren’t tech-savvy, especially those in older demographics, will have difficulty navigating your website. Therefore, keeping things as simple as possible with your website design is a good idea.
5. Maintain Consistency in your Designs
Another web design principle that helps make your web design more accessible for your users is keeping things consistent with your web design elements.
If your branding colors suddenly change from one web page to another, it will be a confusing experience. Users might think they clicked something that led them outside your website.
By keeping things consistent, you will have more distinct branding and won’t confuse your web users about how they navigate your site.
6. Incorporate visual appeal
Just because you want to keep things simple and accessible doesn’t mean you shouldn’t find a way to make your site visually appealing.
Simple ways to do that are not to make your website look cluttered or have an outdated design style. These can help keep your web design straight to the point without compromising on the visuals of your site.
7. Use iterative design
Your design work doesn’t stop once you’ve finished and launched your website. Ideally, it would help if you were interested in applying iterative design principles to your website design.
If you don’t know what it is, iterative design changes your structure after launch based on feedback and testing. With this approach, you continuously change your plan to accommodate your users whenever they find snags. That way, you don’t become complacent and unknowingly provide a subpar website experience for your users.
8. Keep mobile in mind
Although we’re talking about web design, you should still ensure you also have mobile-friendliness in mind. Not everybody who accesses your website will do so on a laptop or desktop.
Given the fact that plenty of people access the web using their phones these days, mobile-friendliness won’t only be better for users, but it will be better for you, too, since it will get more users to stay on your site.
Conclusion
These design practices are all a significant part of creating a web design your users like. With these principles, your users have a smoother and more seamless interaction with your website, which can increase conversion rates and traffic. That’s why you should consider adopting a more user-centric web design experience if you haven’t yet.
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