What’s the best way to remember to buy milk? – Make a shopping list.
What’s the best way to get organized? – Make a to-do list.
What’s the best way to launch a startup? – Make Lean Canvas (which basically means making lists as well).
Making lists works not only in our everyday life but also in our business life. It is extremely important when it comes to your website design as well. To make your web design modern, user-friendly, and prosperous, take a look at this 10 points checklist DesignContest has made for you. We’ve considered every tiny detail to make sure your future web design meets all the requirements possible.
Website’s Logo
Let’s start with the most obvious one – your website’s logo design. It should be technically sound, visible, of the highest quality, and also meaningful. Apart from having multiple formats and sizes, make sure your website’s logo is scalable and readable. Don’t forget that your whole logo or its part should be also reflected in your favicon design (if you are interested in the way to create a perfect favicon design, click here). If you think your logo is ready to be used, give it a try on different gadgets and browsers just to be on the safe side. Sometimes, favicons fail this first test because they are either not transparent or used in a wrong size.
Website’s Sitemap
A sitemap is a sort of the hierarchical order that includes the whole structure of your website. In general, UX designers group the website’s content in order to create a logical sequence your website will be used with. A sitemap is a way to structure your website and see the relations between different pages. It doesn’t matter how you create your website’s sitemap because there is no common right way to do that. Some prefer to create a large illustrative scheme on the board or with the help of colorful stickers, others use mock-ups and similar tools. The most important is to actually create your sitemap the way it would facilitate the process of creating your future website for developers and designers.
Compatibility and Optimisation
What do you create your website for? Different websites have different purposes and one common thing: make a user visit it, browse it, and buy your products or use the services you provide. The Internet knows no limits. Which is why your website can be visited by users from all over the world, who use different browsers and devices to access the Internet. Here comes the task you need to fulfill: creating a responsive website that will be clear on any browser or device. If you optimize your website for iOS users but forget about those who use Android, you lose a significant part of the audience. The same refers to other browsers (some of them have different requirements; thus, your website might look in a different way). Which is why your web design’s compatibility and optimisation are the next checkpoints you need to go through.
Website’s Navigation
Hamburger menu, infinite scrolling, captivating icon designs – everything that deals with your website’s navigation should be taken into account. If speaking metaphorically, your website’s navigation is a magic key that lets your users access your site.
Nowadays, it’s really hard to surprise people with the website’s design because it seems that users suddenly got fed up with all the creativity that surrounds them. They can’t be surprised by video effects or inventive animations. That’s why web designers use “big guns†like unusual navigation tools. The more noteworthy they are, the more captivating they seem to be for your users.
Also, except for thinking about the website’s dazzling navigation and gripping icons design, you need to think about all the buttons’ placement. Hamburger menu or not – that is the question. As you see, website’s navigation includes much more features than it seems at the first sight.
Website’s Hosting
Imagine a situation: you’ve chosen the web hosting to launch your website on, you’ve been using it for a couple of months, everything seems to be perfect… and then, due to some unexpected situation, all the data from your website get erased.
“That’s fine, – you may say. – There is no reason to panic. I still have an option of backups so everything will be ok.â€
Then, it turns out that your hosting doesn’t provide any backups. Or they don’t have a 24/7 support and you have to wait till Monday for the hosting company to fix everything. Or both. To sum up, you’re screwed.
That’s why it’s so important to choose a web hosting that will meet your requirements fully and completely. Taking into account how many web hosting companies there are nowadays, the task gets three times harder. If you don’t really know which web hosting to choose for your website’s launch, you may consider checking web hosting reviews. Having analyzed dozens of such websites, DesignContest has found one that gets distinguished. WebHostingGeeks monitors more than 24 000 hosting providers in an unprejudiced way so that the collected data would be even more precise.
Website’s SEO
Search engine optimization is what helps users find your website via Google, Bing, and their alternatives. Which is why titles, meta tags, keywords etc. turn to be as important as web design itself. If web design is your website’s visual implementation, SEO is its inner world.
Readability
Your website’s content should be clear for those who it is aimed at. The level of its comprehension depends on the website’s readability and is strongly connected with its compatibility and mobile optimisation. Therefore, before launching the website, you need to check it whether the website is clear for all the browsers and most of the devices people can use to reach it.
Call to Action
Finally, the tiniest and one of the most important part of any website design. Call to action is what mesmerizes people on your website and makes them do whatever you want them to. As a rule, call to action gets distinguished by a button of a different size or color. However, the most common mistake here is that people try to spread this call to action feature or emphasize it too much. Thus, the result would be quite an opposite from the one that was expected.
Bottom Line
Remember that episode on Friends when they were going to London to visit Ross’ wedding? They were packing their suitcases and kept saying “Check†every time they put something she needed into her bag. This way, they never forgot anything. Yes, it could have seemed a bit boring but it did bring its results.
