How to spot great web design

Great websites surprise and delight

They have personality. They are distinctive. They announce loud and clear to the visitor: “Here we are. This is what we do. This is why you should care.” They are the very embodiment of what the brand or company is all about. And great web design is as much about the customer as the company.

The best websites are designed for the visitors

Websites aren’t there for benefit of the creatives or the CEO. They aren't there to justify marketing budgets. They have to serve the customer. They should be a welcoming space. The visitor should feel instantly at ease, at home even, as if they have found the perfect place for them. UX is all.

George Orwell wrote that ‘Good prose is like a window pane.’ It is unshowy, unadorned. It doesn’t draw attention to itself. It does not get in the way of the brand or the message. This applies to web design.

Great websites are clean, lean and clutter-free. They aren’t text heavy, unless that is what their users want. White space means breathing space. This is true of the best homepages. Think of wide, airy aisles of upmarket supermarkets, or the sweeping boulevards of city parks.

Easy navigation is the essence of great web design

The journey from page to page should be a gentle stroll in the park. Getting about should be simple and intuitive, as should scrolling and reading the text.

Signposting helps and where you place navigation menus. Navigation should not feel like a game of snakes and ladders. Or falling down the rabbit hole.

Web users aren’t after a treasure hunt

This means you don’t bury the message. Don’t make it hard. We all have limited brainpower so the internet shouldn’t make our heads hurt. Think the path of least resistance.

Signalling should help the lazy and the indifferent along the way. A gentle nudge works wonders. Attractive colours and appealing alluring visuals should lead the web visitor by the hand to where the goodies are. Carousels and automated sliders work small wonders here.

The design can be inventive and unexpected, but navigation should be painless and intuitive. It pays to follow convention here.

Great websites answer the customer’s concerns and queries

FAQs sections have rightly fallen out of favour. Your website should be one expanded FAQs section where the answers are easy to find and in context.

Copywriters know to ‘enter the conversation already in the customer’s head’. Anticipate their questions, queries and pain points, and make the solutions easy to find. They have visited your site with an inclination to engage. You don’t need to pitch. Inform and entertain. Let them get to know you and what you have to offer. Great things will follow.

Great images make for great web design

Great websites instantly engage. It should be love at first sight. One way to do this – look great. And look a little different.

Using the usual industry visual clichés send web visitors packing rather than clicking. Nowhere is this truer than homepages. Many web designers return to the same visual tropes, whether it’s designer spectacles looking at the latest laptops for tech or marketing, or high-vis jackets and hard helmets in the construction industry. Doing something a little different will make you stand out.

Give those images a job to do. And that doesn’t just mean scattering them about to break up the text. Make them earn their keep. They are there to present a message, embody values and show the way.

Consider the use of faces and bright-eyed smiles that greet us as we land on a page. Look at where the eyes are looking. When they are looking at the product or strapline rather than at us (ie. the camera), the focus is placed on it.

And psychological studies have shown that we are likelier to remember it. There was a great home page for Territorywith an alert-looking dog with a rather chic neckerchief trotting expectantly to the sign ‘MODERN COLLECTION / SHOP NOW’. Gently nudges like this work.

Great websites tell stories

Faces and stories matter because they are relatable. They personalise the company or brand. Hence the appeal of About pages. We all love a good story, and once hooked, we care for the characters and we want to find out what happens next.

Charities do this well, as does the banking sector. Websites for finance often show intergenerational photos fit for a family album. They sell family values and stability through snapshots of happy family stories.

Great web design appeals to all

Very often, it has something for everyone. The best websites use a blend of media, approaches and content. Engaging animation supplements sharp writing and winning imagery. Stories, facts, statistics, news, all form the backbone of the message. The whole package is greater than the sum of its parts.

Great websites know that the detail matters

The little things make a big difference. That might be the elegance of the font or the use of micro copy. Every touch point should delight. The savviest web writers know the importance of reassuring, even witty Error 404 messages which steer the wary web visitor back on track.

Responsiveness is rightly the name of the game

Choosing the right web developers and designers is key because responsiveness makes or breaks a website. This means consistency across different devices. Size shouldn’t matter. A website should be fun and functional whatever the screen.

Mobile devices now easily outnumber people . If most of your customers access your site on mobile devices, consider what they see first before having to scroll down the web page. If it isn’t instantly engaging, they may well move on.

Great websites convert

Great web design is quietly seductive. It encourages the reader to look, to linger, to stay longer than they had intended. To echo the 1909 Mather and Crowther advertisement for its own advertising agency, you want the visitor to look twice. You want your website to be 'seen – read – studied – remembered'.

The call to action is visible, clear, and sensibly positioned. And only one click away. For more on this read The three 3s of winning web design .

And finally, remember: none of this happens by accident. Before you embark on a review of your own website, get the team right. No one is a as smart as all of us. Great websites are a collaborative affair. We are all learning from each other.

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