Confused Yet? What Are The Most Important Elements of Website Design?

5 years ago, as a total newbie to the internet, I was confused by the elements of website design.

Like most people starting a website, I thought I needed to cram each page with as much stuff, as I possibly could.

Every page of my website became unintelligible mass of links and images, that didn't make sense to the people unlucky enough to land on one of my pages.

Simplicity is the Key Element of Website Design

Through trial and error I began to see what worked and what didn't. The successes were few and far between.

Then I read the book "Save the Pixel" by Ben Hunt, and I began to see why some websites work, while others fail.

Hunt's major premise of the book is remaining faithful to Occam's Razor which states: "given any two solutions to the same problem, all other factors being equal, the simplest solution is best."

If you want people to take action, then you must design your website in a way that makes sense.

Applying this simple tenant to my website design, people immediately responded more to everything I wrote, my leads increased overnight, I sold more products.

Hunt's design philosophy, the more simply you can get your website to achieve what you want it to do, the better.

Look At Web Design From the User's Perspective

Design is communication, not art.

As web designers, we build websites to communicate the core elements of our clients' businesses.

The end goals may change, but design is simply communicating. Better designers communicate better, the best using as few elements as possible to do the job.

The fewer elements you have on each webpage, the fewer things can go wrong and ultimately your visitor will be less distracted.

How Long Is a Piece of String?

Our website design philosophy is: Every page should have as few elements as it needs to best get it's point across, no more, no less.

The Key Elements of Website Design?

Ultimately, your visitor will decide what goes and what stays from every design. As a designer it's my job to design a site that closely matches a visitors wants and needs from the get-go.

How?

Thorough research, is the key to quality design. By researching a market before designing a website you begin to see what elements are essential to success, you also begin to see what doesn't need to be there.