If you are an online marketer or blogger, at least you must have heard of the term “Content is King” or “Content is King”.
This expression is overused to the point that many become blind to anything other than content. Content may indeed be king, but what’s so great about a king without a throne? I finished this final, often playing to the Indonesian community of bloggers, marketers, and publishers. Many times I see people asking about the appearance of the website, then the person who answers often says something like this “don’t bother with the design, the content is enough, content is king sir”.
Sure, we don’t need to stress about design, but that doesn’t mean performance should be ignored. Even though you are a king, but if your “palace” is like a hut, people will not be sure and think that you are a king. Likewise with websites.
Beautiful design is not complicated
Maybe the reason why people ignore design is because they are afraid to face HTML, CSS, JS, etc. But the truth is you don’t need this ability to create good designs. Beautiful design doesn’t mean lots of animations, gradients, shadows, and other decorations. In fact, if most of them are similar, it won’t be beautiful.
If you are a WordPress user, usually using a template is enough to get an “acceptable” design. But keep in mind that there are some templates (usually free ones) that people have used too often. I immediately step away from templates that are too common to keep it unique.
Website design affects the level of doctrine
I don’t need observations to explain this. Everyone definitely agrees that the better the design, the higher our level of understanding of the website. For those of you who sell products or services on a website, you shouldn’t use a standard design. If you use the default design, potential buyers will feel that you don’t want to make an effort, which in the end the buyer prefers another seller.
Meanwhile, if you depend on advertising revenue, make sure your website content is not only good but also easy to read. The phrase ” don’t judge a book by its cover ” does not apply here.
Then how to make a good design?
I’m not a professional designer, even though I can’t design like a professional, I understand what good design looks like. And most people who often surf the internet also understand when they see good and bad designs.
To create a comfortable design for the audience, here are some tips.
- Logos
We start from the very top of the website. If you can’t design a logo, it’s better not to use a logo. There are lots of websites in Indonesia that insist on using a logo even though the design is not pretty. If you still want to use a logo, just make it in the form of just text without decoration.
2. Navigation
Make no mistake, more navigational links does not mean visitors will visit multiple pages at once. Instead they will go. Precisely the fewer links to other pages, the higher the possibility of visitors to shop for products or click on ads. Therefore, just install the navigation links as necessary.
Oh yes, I believe 99% of the audience will not read the TOS and Privacy Policy. So don’t put both of them in the main navigation, even if you don’t need them, you should just remove them.
3. Color
Even if you are a Barcelona fan, never use a blue background with red text. The result is like this. Do not mix colors that do not match each other. Don’t mix a detailed background with bright characters either. Confused what color to wear? If you can’t specify a color, just use predominantly white and dark gray to near black (don’t use absolute black), plus one other color (blue, red, green, etc) as the color for the links and other attributes.
4. Design
The design in general is also minimal, you should adapt it so that it is not the same as the original model. To show that our website is only one in the world, the design must also be made different from others.
5. Typography and writing format
Use a font that is easy to read and that is commonly used on other websites. There is no need to experiment with letterforms because readers are already familiar with certain alphabets. Likewise with the size and spacing between lines.
The usual font size is generally between 12-18px, some are more than that depending on the website. While the line height (space between lines) is generally around 1.5em.
In addition, the way you write also affects the peace of the reader. In this case, one paragraph should be optimally 4 lines long and in 1 line less than 40 words.
Other mistakes that minimize convenience
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- Loading too slow
- Too many ads
- Pop-ups
- The distance is too tight
- Too “unique”
