The Importance of Good Design and a User-Friendly Website

Following up on the blog post about the “SEO website checklist,” we’ll now take a look at how design and user-friendliness can impact your website. One of the most important aspects of creating a successful website that delivers results—such as more customers, sign-ups, or sales—is its user-friendliness.

Below are some tips on design and user-friendliness

Consistent website layout
Pages are laid out in a consistent manner. The style is applied uniformly throughout. Make sure your homepage is as clear and organized as possible, with plenty of white space and high-quality images.

Clear navigation
Your website’s navigation is perhaps the most important factor when it comes to user-friendliness. Think about it: when you’re looking for something, you want to find it quickly. Your website visitors want the same thing. Website visitors are impatient and don’t want to have to go through your entire website to find the specific information they’re looking for. Keep your menu items short and to the point.

Mobile view
Be sure to check your design on mobile devices, especially if you have a “young target audience.” Ensure there is sufficient space between text and images.

Royalty-free images
Use only royalty-free images. Add personality to your website. Displaying a photo of yourself or your team creates a personal touch and shows that you’re not afraid to put a face to your brand.

Use clear calls to action
Important elements and calls to action stand out sufficiently. For example, contact buttons or request a quote.

Website readability

• The typography used is consistent (think fonts, text size, and line spacing);
• Consider using bullet points;
• Use sufficient subheadings to make the text easy to read;
• Ensure a good balance between content and images with sufficient white space.
• Text has sufficient contrast with the background on which it is placed.

Fast website loading
One of the most important factors for search engines is how quickly your website loads. By using WebP files instead of JPEGs, your website will load much faster. WebP (pronounced "weppie") is a file format developed specifically for the web that significantly reduces the size of images—without any loss of quality! A WebP file is approximately 25 to 45% smaller in size than a JPEG. Thanks to the smaller file size, images load faster. Good news for your website’s performance! Now that WebP, developed by Google, is widely supported by most browsers, we also incorporate it into the development of new websites.

Other considerations

• Ensure the website is user-friendly in every browser.
• The website has a recognizable favicon.
• Have a test panel evaluate your website. For example, a few of your customers. Are all sections easy to find with as few clicks as possible?
• The various website pages have been tested in all popular web browsers.
• All pages have been tested on various devices and screen sizes.
• Images have clear alt text so that users with visual impairments can read them.
• Check the main and submenus, as well as links in the body text, to ensure they link to working and active pages.
• Links are clearly recognizable and have a distinctive hover and focus styling.
• Forms use labels with clear descriptions.
• Web pages are accessible to screen reader users.
• The terms and conditions are easy to find on all pages.
• Each page contains a link to the privacy statement, and the website complies with the GDPR. Forms include a description of what happens to the data entered.
• Cookies are not placed until a user explicitly consents to them. Use a cookie banner if this applies.
• The VAT and Chamber of Commerce numbers are easy to find on the website.