Guide to A/B testing: Your email Get A/B Testing Guide Elite Camp 2014 In Europe? Come to my 3-day data-driven marketing event. June 13-15, 2014. Click here 8 Effective Web Design Principles You Should Know The design of your website is more important for conversions than you think. You can implement any conversion boosting tactic in the world, but if it looks like crap, it wont do May 17, 2012 Extra Lucrative Conversion Advice Search Blog Conversion Optimization Services 1:1 Consultations Conversion Research About RSS Do you need professional PDFs? Try PDFmyURL! Recent Posts How To Boost eCommerce Revenues With Upselling 2 Ecommerce Product Page Reviews How Personalized Marketing Can Increase Your eCommerce Sales Designing Your Website Flow To Meet Your Conversion Needs Everything You Need To Know About Creating Killer Explainer Videos Follow Follow @peeplaja @peeplaja 11.1K followers Follow 1.6k implement any conversion boosting tactic in the world, but if it looks like crap, it wont do you much good. Design is not just something designers do. Design is marketing. Design is your product and how it works. The more Ive learned about design, the better results Ive gotten. Here are 8 effective web design principles you should know and follow. Effective Web Design Principle #1: Visual Hierarchy Squeaky wheels get the grease and prominent visuals get the attention. Visual hierarchy is one of the most important principles behind good web design. Its the order in which the human eye perceives what it sees. Exercise. Please rank the circles in the order of importance: Tweet Tweet 432 Like Like 208 200 Share Share Do you need professional PDFs? Try PDFmyURL! About I identify where websites are leaking money and help fix them. Businesses around the globe get their conversion problems solved by my agency Markitekt. This blog is all about getting more results from your website. Read more Without knowing ANYTHING about these circles, you were easily able to rank them. Thats visual hierarchy. Certain parts of your website are more important than others (forms, calls to action, value proposition etc), and you want those to get more attention than the less important parts. If you website menu has 10 items, are all of them equally important? Where do you want the user to click? Make important links more prominent. Hierarchy does not only come from size. Amazon makes the Add to cart button more prominent by using color: Start with the business objective You should rank elements on your website based on your business objective. If you dont have a specific goal, you cant know what to prioritize. Heres an example, its a screenshot I took of the Williams Sonoma website. They want to sell outdoor cookware. The biggest eye catcher is the huge piece of meat (make me want it), followed by the headline (say what it is) and call to action button (get it!). Fourth place goes to a paragraph of text under the headline, fifth is the free shipping banner and the top navigation is last. This is visual hierarchy well done. Do you need professional PDFs? Try PDFmyURL! Exercise. Surf the web and consciously rank the elements in the visual hierarchy. Then go look at your own site. Is there something important (key information points that visitors are likely seeking) that is not high enough in the hierarchy? Change that. More about visual hierarchy. Effective Web Design Principle #2: Divine Proportions Golden ratio is a magical number 1.618 ( ) that makes all things proportioned to it aesthetically pleasing (or so it is believed). Then there is also the Fibonacci sequence where each term is defined as the sum of the Do you need professional PDFs? Try PDFmyURL! two previous terms: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21 and so on. The interesting thing is that we have two seemingly unrelated topics producing the same exact number. Heres what the golden ratio looks like: Many artists and architects have proportioned their works to approximate the golden ratio. A famous example is Pantheon built in Ancient Greece: Do you need professional PDFs? Try PDFmyURL! Can it be used for web design? You betcha. Heres Twitter: Image source Heres a comment by Twitters creative director, @stop: To anyone curious about #NewTwitter proportions, know that we didnt leave those ratios to chance. This, of course, only applies to the narrowest version of the UI. If your browser window is wider, your details pane will expand Do you need professional PDFs? Try PDFmyURL! to provide greater utility, throwing off these proportions. But the narrowest width shows where we started, ratio-wise. So, if your layout width is 960px, divide it by 1.618 (=593px). Now you know that the content area should be 593px and sidebar 367px. If the website height is 760px tall, you can split it into 470px and 290px chunks (760/1.618=~470). Additional reading Heres a Golden Ratio calculator you can use to apply it to your site. How to apply Golden Ratio to typography Effective Web Design Principle #3: Hicks Law Hicks law says that with every additional choice increases the time required to take a decision. Youve experienced this countless times at restaurants. Menus with huge options make it difficult to choose your dinner. If it just offered 2 options, taking a decision would take much less time. This is similar to Paradox of Choice the more choice you give people, the easier it is to choose nothing. The more options a user has when using your website, the more difficult it will be to use (or wont be used at all). So in order to provide a more enjoyable experience, we need to eliminate choices. To make a better web design, the process of eliminating distracting options has to be continous throughout the design process. In the era of infinite choice, people need better filters! If you sell a huge amount of Do you need professional PDFs? Try PDFmyURL! products, add better filters for easier decision making. Wine Library sells a huge amount of wine. They do a good job with the filters (on the left): Learn more about Hicks Law. Effective Web Design Principle #4: Fitts Do you need professional PDFs? Try PDFmyURL! Law Fitts law stipulates that the time required to move to a target area (e.g. click a button) is a function of the distance to the target and the size of the target. In other words, the bigger an object and the closer it is to us, the easier it is to use it. Spotify makes it easier to hit Play than other buttons: They also place it (on the fullscreen Desktop app) in the bottom left corner, which is considered the most valuable real estate since the corners are technically the most accessible. This does not, however, apply to web design (due to scrolling and the way operating systems are). It doesnt mean that bigger is always better. A button that takes up half the screen is not a good idea, and we dont need a mathematical study to know this. Even so, Fitts law is a binary logarithm. This means that the predicted results of the usability of an object runs along a curve, not a straight line. A tiny button will become much easier to click when given a 20% size increase, while a very large object will not share the same benefits in usability when given the same 20% boost in size. This is similar to rule of target size. The size of a button should be proportional to its expected frequency of use. You can check your stats for which buttons people use the most, and make popular buttons bigger Do you need professional PDFs? Try PDFmyURL! (easier to hit). Lets imagine theres a form you want people to fill. At the end of the form, there are two buttons: Submit and Reset (clear fields). 99.9999% want to hit submit. Hence the button should be much bigger than reset. More about Fitts Law. Effective Web Design Principle #5: Rule of Thirds Its a good idea to use images in your design. A visual communicates your ideas much faster than any text. The best images follow the rule of thirds: an image should be imagined as divided into nine equal parts by two equally-spaced horizontal lines and two equally-spaced vertical lines, and that important compositional elements should be placed along these lines or their intersections. See how the image on the right is more interesting? Thats rule of thirds in action. Do you need professional PDFs? Try PDFmyURL! Image credit: Wikimedia Commons Using beautiful, big images contributes to design as it is (not withstanding the growth of Pinterest), following this rule will make them more interesting and thus your website more appealing. Effective Web Design Principle #6: Gestalt Design Laws Gestalt psychology is a theory of mind and brain. Its principle is that the human eye sees objects in their entirety before perceiving their individual parts. Heres what I mean: Do you need professional PDFs? Try PDFmyURL! Notice how you could see the dog without focusing on each black spot that the dog consists of? The key takeaway here is that people see the whole before they see the parts. People always see the whole of your website first, before they distinguish the header, menu, footer and so on. As one of the founders of gestaltism Kurt Koffka said: the whole exists independently from the parts. There are 8 so-called gestalt design laws that allow us to predict how people will perceive something. Here they are: 1. Law of Proximity People group things together that are close together in space. They become a single perceived object. With effective web design, you need to make sure things that do NOT go together, are not perceived as one. Similarly, you want to group certain design elements together (navigation menu, footer etc) to communicate that they form a whole. Do you need professional PDFs? Try PDFmyURL! Craigslist uses this law to make it easy to understand which sub-categories fall under for sale:
2. Law of Similarity We group similar things together. This similarity can occur in the form of shape, colour, shading or other qualities. Here we group black dots into one group and whites into another one, because well, the Do you need professional PDFs? Try PDFmyURL! black dots look kind of similar to each other. Codeschool makes all the testimonial boxes similar, so we see all the testimonials as a single group: Do you need professional PDFs? Try PDFmyURL! 3. Law of Closure We seek completeness. With shapes that arent closed, when parts of a whole picture are missing, our perception fills in the visual gap. We see two squares overlaid on four circles even though none of these shapes actually exist in the graphic. Without the law of closure we, would just see different lines with different lengths, but with the law of closure, we combine the lines into whole shapes. Using the law of closure can make logos or design elemets more interesting. A good example of this is the World Wide Fund For Nature designed by Sir Peter Scott in 1961: Do you need professional PDFs? Try PDFmyURL! 4. Law of Symmetry The mind perceives objects as being symmetrical and forming around a center point. It is perceptually pleasing to be able to divide objects into an even number of symmetrical parts. When we see two symmetrical elements that are unconnected, the mind perceptually connects them to form a coherent shape. When we look at the image above, we tend to observe three pairs of symmetrical brackets rather than six individual brackets. People prefer symmetric appearances over asymmetric ones. Balanced three columns and the curve add to the enjoyment of BootB web design: Do you need professional PDFs? Try PDFmyURL! 5. Law of Common Fate We tend to perceive objects as lines that move along a path. We group together of objects that have the same trend of motion and are therefore on the same path. People mentally group together sticks or raised hands pointing somewhere, because they all point in the same direction. You can use this to guide the users attention to something (e.g. a signup form, value proposition etc). Do you need professional PDFs? Try PDFmyURL! For example, if there is an array of dots and half the dots are moving upward while the other half are moving downward, we would perceive the upward moving dots and the downward moving dots as two distinct units. 6. Law of Continuity People have a tendency to perceive a line as continuing its established direction. In cases where there is an intersection between objects (e.g. lines), we tend to perceive the two lines as two single uninterrupted entities. Stimuli remains distinct even with overlap. Do you need professional PDFs? Try PDFmyURL! Fixel uses this to connect faces to bios: There are other gestalt laws as well such as Figure and Ground or Law of Good Gestalt (objects tend to be perceptually grouped together if they form a pattern that is regular, simple and orderly like the Olympic rings), but I think the ones mentioned here are most useful to know. Effective Web Design Principle #7: White Do you need professional PDFs? Try PDFmyURL! space and clean design White space (also called negative space) is the portion of a page left empty. Its the space between graphics, margins, gutters, space between columns, space between lines of type or visuals. It should not be considered merely blank space it is an important element of design. It enables the objects in it to exist at all. White space is all about the use of hierarchy. The hierarchy of information, be it type, colour or images. A page without white space, crammed full of text or graphics, runs the risk of appearing busy, cluttered, and is typically difficult to read (people wont even bother). This is why simple websites are scientifically better. Enough white space makes a website look clean. While clean design is crucial to communicating a clear message, it doesnt just mean less content. Clean design means a design that makes the best use of the space it is in. To make a clean design, you have to know how to communicate clearly by using white space wisely. Made.com does white space well: Do you need professional PDFs? Try PDFmyURL!
The fine use of white space makes it easy to focus on the main message and visuals, and the body copy easy to read. White spaces promotes elegance and sophistication, improves legibility and drives focus. Read more about white space and simplicity. Effective Web Design Principle #8: Occams Razor Occams razor is a principle urging one to select among competing hypotheses that which makes the fewest assumptions and thereby offers the simplest explanation of the effect. To put it in the design context, Occams Razor states that the simplest solution is usually best. In a post about their Angelpad experience, Pipedrive guys say the following: The Angelpad team and mentors challenged us in many ways. Do you need professional PDFs? Try PDFmyURL! You have too many things on your home page was something we didnt agree with at first, but were happy to test. And it turned out we had been wrong indeed. We removed 80% of the content, and left one sign-up button and one Learn More link on the home page. Conversion to sign up increased by 300%. Its not just about the looks, but also about how it works. Some companies like 37Signals have turned simple into a business model. Heres a quote from the book Rework (written by their founders): Do you need professional PDFs? Try PDFmyURL! Lots of people hate us because our products do less than the competitions. Theyre insulted when we refuse to include their pet feature. But were just as proud of what our products dont do as we are of what they do. We design them to be simple because we believe most software is too complex: too many features, too many buttons, too much confusion. Simple, minimal design does not automatically mean the design works, or is effective. But in my experience simple is always better than the opposite and hence we should strive to simplify. Conclusion Effective web design and art are not the same. You should design for the user and by having a business objective in mind. Using these web design principles you can get to aesthetically and financially rewarding results. Rating: 4.7/5 (63 votes cast) Do you need professional PDFs? Try PDFmyURL! Peep Laja Peep Laja is an entrepreneur and conversion optimization expert. He's been doing digital marketing for 10+ years in Europe, Middle East, Central America and the US. He has extensive experience across verticals: in the past hes run a software company in Europe, an Related Posts If you enjoyed this post, subscribe to updates Get actionable conversion advice in your inbox. Your email Get updates via email Email once a week. Unsubscribe at any time with a single click. Follow Follow @peeplaja @peeplaja 11.1K followers Peep Laja Blog, Design 42 Build It With The User in Mind: How to Design User Flow 5 Principles of Persuasive Web Design The 12 Principles Of Effective Blog Design Is Your Site User Friendly & Conversion Optimized ? Website Reviews Do you need professional PDFs? Try PDFmyURL! SEO agency in Panama, real estate portal in Dubai and worked for an international non-profit. Today he runs a conversion optimization agency Markitekt. Ridiculously Effective Technique for Online Lead Generation
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42 Comments Djava tech Jul 25, 2012 @ 01:08:00 Great article.!!!Nice to know about new things with helping concept. I am almost brand new to blogging and really like your post, it is really on target! Thanks for all of your time & work. Hope you always write this blog. Thank you, The given information is very effective. Ill keep update with the same. website designing Reply Fernando Sep 20, 2012 @ 14:49:34 This blog post should be GOSPEL to anybody involved with designing websites. Reply Do you need professional PDFs? Try PDFmyURL! otto Jan 16, 2014 @ 12:27:49 so, its made up and shouldnt be believed? Reply Peep Laja Jan 18, 2014 @ 20:23:08 Whats made up? Reply Drew Callison Feb 14, 2014 @ 14:52:31 Otto appears to be referring to the bible Peep. Your work is brilliant and certainly invokes a serious change of my web designing consciousness. Great Post! Reply siva Oct 24, 2012 @ 01:45:08 nice research, thanks for sharing by Sivakumar, HTML Developer Reply niresh Nov 08, 2012 @ 03:05:29 I knew some and i`ve learned some thnx for sharing this research work Reply Ross Beamish Reply Do you need professional PDFs? Try PDFmyURL! Nov 11, 2012 @ 16:30:17 My yr.10 ICT students are going to get a LOT from this tomorrow. Thanks for the great article. Peep Laja Nov 11, 2012 @ 19:19:17 Great, hope theyre interested. Reply Abhi Rao Nov 12, 2012 @ 12:29:25 I will be sharing your site with my composition students who are designing their webfoliosgreat info, thanks! Reply ConversionXLs Top 10 Posts of 2012 | ConversionXL Dec 20, 2012 @ 22:48:17 [...] 8 Universal Web Design Principles You Should Know. Whether youre a designer or not, understanding these principles help you understand good design. [...] Reply 8 Principles of Excellent Website Design | EvolvingSites Blog Dec 28, 2012 @ 12:47:53 [...] came across a fantastic article applying 8 universal design principles to website design. Heres a [...] Reply Aki Andrew Feb 03, 2013 @ 13:23:55 this is very good, thanks for the info Reply Do you need professional PDFs? Try PDFmyURL! Mukesh Mak Mar 25, 2013 @ 02:32:26 Great article.!!!Nice to know about new things with helping concept. I am almost brand new to blogging and really useful for me .that is collection of the tools are helpful for the web designing. Thank you Reply Shelly O'Neill Mar 27, 2013 @ 17:26:00 Great article. Really useful information. Best Ive read in a while on this subject. Thanks so much for all your efforts. Reply Nela May 27, 2013 @ 05:24:10 Great article! I shared it in my article Newbies Guide to Getting Started in Web Design Business I wrote for Webiny.com Reply 8 Universal Web Design Principles You Should Know | Alex Guldbeck, Web Consultant Jun 05, 2013 @ 03:08:21 [...] Read more here : http://conversionxl.com/8-universal-web-design-principles-you- should-to-know/ [...] Reply Logo Design Singapore Jul 04, 2013 @ 20:35:57 Hi there! Quick question thats completely off topic. Do you know how to make your site mobile friendly? My weblog looks weird when viewing from my apple iphone. Im Reply Do you need professional PDFs? Try PDFmyURL! trying to find a theme or plugin that might be able to fix this problem. If you have any suggestions, please share. Cheers! Web Design Principles Every Designer Should Know - Internet Business UK Jul 05, 2013 @ 00:26:15 [...] See 6 more web design principles at conversionxl.com [...] Reply Web design principals notes | Keep connected Jul 16, 2013 @ 01:36:31 [...] http://conversionxl.com/8-universal-web-design-principles-you-should-to-know/#. [...] Reply Taylor Dean Jul 18, 2013 @ 04:05:01 nice post. i learn so many things from your article. ive been reading your articles and i find it helpful in making my projects. Reply Ash Jul 18, 2013 @ 17:38:31 Another amazing blog post Peep! How the heck did you learn about all these laws and then apply them to design? Brilliant! Reply Bill B Jul 29, 2013 @ 10:58:00 Web designers would be wise to use products such as Microsoft OneNote and EverNote as a way to jot down any ideas they have. These programs are great for organizing your Reply Do you need professional PDFs? Try PDFmyURL! thoughts and putting them all in one place. Its a great starting point when trying to determine how to build your site. Pooria Kh. Aug 10, 2013 @ 15:03:10 WoW! Great article, complete is a better expression here, complete set of basis i designer should have, wonderful article, thanks to you Reply Michael Lysiak Aug 20, 2013 @ 14:12:23 Thanks for sharing. These principals will definitely be useful to me. Reply Reyven Aug 23, 2013 @ 12:27:02 Wow! I really enjoyed reading this. Im an aspiring web designer and these information made me think I still have a lot to learn to be certified one. Nice piece of article. Tweeted it as well. :) Reply Jess Sep 05, 2013 @ 11:34:54 These are all good tips and that piece of meat in the middle reminded me how hungry I was! Reply bobit Reply Do you need professional PDFs? Try PDFmyURL! Sep 16, 2013 @ 22:37:05 really worth tips i like the first principle very much Benyamin Oct 05, 2013 @ 08:45:36 I thoroughly enjoyed reading this, ive bookmarked the page and will referring to it until it has been memorised! Reply Emma Oct 21, 2013 @ 22:48:02 Good article. Next time you might want to have someone proofread it for spelling and punctuation. (That is, if you value aesthetically and financially rewarding results. Reply jason404 Oct 22, 2013 @ 03:46:29 Thats the Acropolis, not the Pantheon (which is in ancient Rome). Reply jason404 Oct 22, 2013 @ 04:29:05 actually, the Parthenon to be more specific! Reply 8 Universal Web Design Principles You Should Know | PROforma CCG ... Beyond The Transaction Oct 22, 2013 @ 05:08:21 [] http://conversionxl.com/8-universal-web-design-principles-you-should-to-know/ [] Reply Do you need professional PDFs? Try PDFmyURL! Matthew H Oct 22, 2013 @ 18:04:57 Superb article, bookmarked with a plan to read over and again to sink your musings in. Reply Giulio Oct 27, 2013 @ 22:30:42 The Occams razor part is incredible. 300% increased conversion, wow Reply Azanka Oct 29, 2013 @ 19:50:09 Great post but I would like to make a correction. Pantheon is in Rome and not Greek In the photo this the Parthenon from Athens. Reply Nicholas Oct 31, 2013 @ 04:25:04 Thank you for a brilliantly concise overview and compelling examples. It all has that ring of unstated truth about it. Well done Peep! Reply Don Nov 25, 2013 @ 20:03:38 Great Post, i learn a lot form this article. I hope you can post more for beginners in web design like me.. Reply Chris Brown Reply Do you need professional PDFs? Try PDFmyURL! Jan 14, 2014 @ 23:48:41 I like the information shared. Your efforts in researching such a good content is really appreciated. I like everything written but the important that taken my attention is the Law of Common Fate, which is really new to me. I am a web designer and love reading blogs. Keep sharing latest news about market. Igor Mar 08, 2014 @ 09:31:28 Great article, loved reading it. I think it will influence my future desings a bit, though I allready know about some things. Keep it up! Reply Jacquelyne Bicklein Mar 23, 2014 @ 21:36:49 I couldnt refrain from commenting. Exceptionally well written! Reply Rusty Macauley Mar 27, 2014 @ 13:39:43 Its nearly impossible to find knowledgeable people in this particular subject, but you seem like you know what youre talking about! Thanks Reply Leave a Reply Your Name * Your Email * Do you need professional PDFs? Try PDFmyURL! ConversionXL 2014 Powered by WordPress Themify WordPress Themes Your Website Post Comment Do you need professional PDFs? Try PDFmyURL!