Creating the user interface (UI) is a key process in website design. It is the graphical layout of a website and it consists of buttons, texts, images, sliders, animations and a host of other interactive and visual elements. Designing the UI is important as it can have a direct effect on a customer’s willingness to interact with a website. In fact, Google conducted a study concerning the effects of aesthetic design elements on customer opinions and found that new customers could form an opinion on a website (based purely off design elements) within 50 milliseconds.
If you want to make sure your first impression with a new customer is positive, then look to follow these 5 tips for effective UI web design:
- Know your audience.
The first step to creating an effective UI web design is to know your audience. Who are you targeting with this website? Are you catering to millennials? Teenagers? Professionals? Once you’ve identified your target audience, you will then need to think about what design will appeal to them.
If you are the user coming to your page, are your services or products clearly visible? Is your website easy to navigate or is it too congested? While the look is important as it highlights your brand image to your target market, it is also crucial that the design allows for easy navigation of your website. Finally, make sure that there is seamless transition of your website both on a computer and a mobile. Mobile is especially crucial with the growth of smartphones, a high percentage of searches are being conducted through phones.
- Think about the aesthetic.
The aesthetic matters, it is what attracts a user to stay on a website. There are a wide variety of different elements that make up the overall aesthetic of a webpage ranging from colours and animations to typography and videos and images. For instance, typography is one of the oldest design elements and involves choosing a font and manipulating factors such as slant, width, height and depth to make it perfectly in line with the brand or product/service it is promoting. While design is important to entice the user to stay on the page, be sure not to over do it, otherwise it can be too overwhelming for a user.
- Update your website look.
Trends in terms of UI design are constantly changing, for instance this year there has been growth in 3D design elements as well as an increased usage of gradient colours in website design. By implementing a couple of current design aspects, as well as keeping the website up to date, in terms of making updates in the backend, you will make sure that the website doesn’t look or become outdated.
- Test your UI and improve problem areas.
An important step in any website development project is to test what you’re doing. You want to make sure that every element in the user interface is working as you have intended. This is also your chance to identify and improve problem areas. For instance, if the design is not responsive enough or not fitting the look you were aiming for, then you can make adjustments before you go live.
- Keep it simple.
The last tip in creating an effective UI web design is to keep it as simple as you can. The most successful UIs are intuitive, i.e. users can easily learn how to use the website with little to no adapting needed. The interactive and visual elements must not be overwhelming and you shouldn’t sacrifice the ease of use for the look of the website
To summarize, you should know your audience, think about the aesthetic, look to consistently update your website, test your UI and keep the overall design as simple as possible.
