Top website Design and development Guidelines for 2018

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Most of the designers don’t really care about design standards. However, it is crucial for web designers and developers. There are few Standard Web Conventions which are actually basic web design best practices and standards. They are a certain set of rules which the web design services ought to follow to align with the expectations of the visitors perfectly. These guidelines of website design and development are vital for seamless user experience.

Let’s have a look at them

1.The positioning of the Business Logo in the Top Left
Almost all websites have their logo situated in the upper left corner of each page which are clickable.

2. Contact Button in Top Right
Most of the websites have contact link or button situated in the top right corner of each page. This placement is quite common and often considered as best practice. However, it can’t be considered as standard.

3. Home Page should have Value Proposition High Up
Almost all websites have a particular value proposition located quite high on the home page. It means these websites explain their values “above the fold” to the visitors. The remaining websites don’t have a clear value proposition.
As per web designers, there is no standard pixel height for different browsers. Hence, there is no fold. However, few design elements do appear high on the web pages and are often visible to the majority of website visitors without scrolling

4. Call to Action out to be put high up on the Home Page
Most of the websites have visually important calls to action. However, a large section of websites doesn’t follow this standard which is pretty much a convention.

5. Search Feature should be on the Header
Nearly half of total websites have a search feature embedded in the header. Almost all marketing sites don’t have any search feature which appears globally on each page either as an icon, link or search box. Search tools aren’t quite necessary unless the website in question contains a significantly large amount of content.

6. The footer should have a Signup box
A quarter of total websites allow the visitors to easily signup as well as subscribe to email updates, situated in the footer. The most common content for these footers is privacy, copyright, legal, contact links, and sitemap. Visitors tend to expect to find out contact information right in the bottom center or bottom right of websites.

7. Social media icons should be kept in the footer
A three-quarter of websites consists of icons for social media positioned in the footer. It is pretty much a standard design element. As in the footer, clicking these particular icons takes the website visitors to the corresponding social media website. This particular design element can also cost your traffic, hurt results and increase bounce rates. That is why social media icons should be added in the footer. In order to reduce their visual prominence, the icons’ full-color version should only appear after the website visitor hover the cursor over the icon.

8. Responsive design
Almost all of the website nowadays are mobile-friendly owing to responsive web design. It provides the visitors with a great experience irrespective of their device.
It is actually a combination of programming and design which is difficult to actually add after a particular website is built. It is certainly a part of a redesign that is why it is actually a convention, but not an industry standard. Responsive design has been regularly practiced over the years.

Custom Design is Prominent
Not all design standard that we discussed are standard. Except for few cases in the placement of the logo, the value proposition, and the main navigation, there aren’t any standards for website design. Website design conventions generally consist of a prominent call to action, social media icons present in the footer, search tool in the header and responsive web design.

Other common design features are generally termed as best practices but may not be used by a major portion of websites. Custom web design which is specific to any business and its audience, is the crucial aspect.

Few tips of Web Designers

1. Conforming to various standards can be an easier way to meet the inherent expectations of the audience. The visitors are quite impressionable. Most of these people have visited thousands of websites so they often come with a pretty good idea of what they will actually find and where they will be able to find it. If a particular design element is expected by the visitors at a certain place, then web designers should do it.

2. Beyond the design elements, there is web design standard which all good designers need to understand. Colour, tone, and type are quite specific to any business. You need to have a style guide for your own website and remain stuck with it. It is the basic brand standard.

3. Websites need to be built using the different programming standards that are agreed upon by the W3C. It certainly makes them easier to display and also behave properly on different web browsers. Hire website designer who knows all of these basic standards.

4. Accessibility standards should be followed religiously. It is a basic human right to access the information. So websites should conform to these standards.

Standard web conventions aren’t meant for a great design. If you don’t strictly follow any of these rules, then you should do it on your own risk with a pretty good reason. You need to plan on measuring the overall impact of being unexpected.

Conclusion

The web design and development standards set the tone of websites. The web development services need to follow these standards to provide the seamless and consistent user experience.

Tarun Nagar
Tarun Nagar is the Founder & CEO of Dev Technosys, a global ranking Mobile and Web Development Company. With 10+ years of experience of enabling then Startups which are now global leaders with creative solutions, he is differentiated by out-of-the-box IT solutions throughout the domain. He is known for his visionary qualities and adaptability for technology and trends, passionate as he is in every aspect dedicated to making IT simple, accessible and approachable for business enterprises.

1 COMMENT

  1. you guys should also include, things that should not do, for example keyword stuffing, using door way pages, using cloaked pages and using invisible text. it’s easy to learn what good webdesign is, but learning what not to do is also very important.

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