The first impressions that a website can create to a visitor are one of the most crucial aspects in web design. An impressive web design is a kind of gateway to make your website popular by providing good content to the users later. A well structured and attractively designed website will generate the interest from the visitors and make them to go through your content thoroughly This will make them them to stay with your website for a longer duration. In order to generate good impression, a website needs to have much more than just pretty design. Below are some of the tips to generate good first impression through web design:
Reduce the Load Time
Always ensure that the time its takes to load the pages on your website to the minimum. If pages are loading slowly, it will waste the time of your visitors and make them impatient. Pages which are light and crisp will load quickly and will encourage the visitors to stay for longer duration and visit more number of pages. Designers can make the webpages light by removing unnecessary graphics and images.
Layout
The layout of the website is one of the most important elements of web design which can generate a good first impression. The layout of a website should be in such a way that it draws the visitor's attention to the most important items of a webpage. Apart from making the page to look attractive, a good layout will also make it easy for the visitors to use your site. A creative layout will make a website more effective and make it to standout from the crowd.
Advertisements
Advertisements are one of the best ways for a website to generate revenue. But, websites which are totally filled up with advertisements will create a very bad impression upon the visitors. Be careful with the number of ads placed on a single page, the type of ads placed, and the location on a page where the ads are placed. Avoid placing your ads in places that can interfere with the content of your website. And place ads that are suitable for your website. For E.g. an ad on dog food placed in an automobile website doesn't make any sense and can even irritate the visitors.
Ease of Navigation
The website should be easily navigable so that visitors can hop from one page to the other seamlessly. Poor navigation on a website can frustrate the visitors and make them to leave your website early. On the other hand, a well devised navigation plan will give a lot of positive experience to the visitors. Make sure that hyperlinks are placed at the appropriate place on your webpages. A link to the site map and a link to the homepage on every webpage is a must for all kinds of sites as this ensures that the visitors don't get lost while navigating.
Popups
Don't use popups unnecessarily on your websites. Popups are so much hated by most of the surfers that most of them have a popup blocker installed on their browsers. Web designers can either totally eliminate popups and place that content in the regular webpages or find a way to use popups effectively. For E.g. genuine offers and gifts announced through popups may not irritate surfers much.
Video and Audio
Video and Audio content is becoming more and more common due to the increased prevalence of high speed internet connections. However, web designers need to use video and audio content intuitively so that it will not disturb the visitors. High resolution videos posted on webpages can make the navigation slow, so try to provide as much quality as possible through lighter files. As a general rule, web designers also need to make sure that the audio and video content on their websites doesn't start automatically without the visitors having to start it.
Accessibility
The website should be accessible to all of your visitors irrespective of the browsers and operating systems they use. Some visitors of your website may have slower internet connections, use older versions of browsers, and have operating systems which doesn't support advanced graphics. If your website is not easily accessible to all the visitors irrespective of the reason, it may create a very bad impression on them. One way to handle these problems is to have a light and low graphics version of your website which can be accessed by almost all the visitors.
Take Away
When a visitor opens to your website for the first time a first impression will be created almost instantaneously. A good first impression will make him to revisit your website, while a bad impression will be difficult to erase from his mind. The above tips can help web designers in designing a website which can generate an instant good impression of the visitors.
About The Author: Brianne is a writer/blogger. She loves writing, traveling and reading books. She helps with marketing at Regal Cigs.