Your Website design must consider the user's Psychology

Build your website -> Website Design

The design is probably the most important aspect of building, promoting and in some cases monetizing your website. I read in an article that said "In many respects, it is the window to the soul of an Internet business as well as the people behind it." Some portals are so busy, it is very easy to get lost in them. They attempt to express too much, confuse visitors and make interaction stressful. You have to be careful to handle it in the best possible way.

On the other hand, look at Google front page. It is one of the most sparsely populated websites on the Internet and doing a super business with it. But except Google and perhaps a few others, those which are too barren or sparse fail to build trust or convey purpose with users clearly.

You can find a middle ground where the designer's creativity shows in the website as well as the user's needs are met in terms of ease of use, navigation, good content and such. That balance is certainly the goal, but how do we get there without alienating either essential group?

The difference between these two schools of thought might be arbitrary to some, but they can have a profound effect on how your site performs. In a perfect world, there would be a balance between the two worlds which in turn drives users to take specific actions, feel certain emotions, and create certain thoughts. Along the way, there are many challenges - cost, purpose, guidelines, and environment, not to mention the many platform limitations. Needless to say, the designer must follow to meet the objective of the website.

Index is not necessarily the most important page anymore
Since search engines, social networks and individuals can send Web users to virtually any area of a website, it is more essential than ever before to make strong first impressions, regardless of the drop-off point for visitors.

The designer must ask themselves "How do individual pages relate to the overall objective of the site itself and, in turn, how do these pages relate to the user?" Straying too far from the core mission of the website can be detrimental. To achieve consistency and saliency of purpose, the rule should always be to analyze each element appearing on each page to determine its likelihood of distracting visitors.

Once the visitor to your website has seen the home - index - page and is interested enough to venture deeper, presenting clear and functional navigation should become a primary purpose of pages. So getting users to this content as quickly as possible must be a priority of the design.

Use white space effectively
White space is the portion of a page left empty or unmarked - essentially, just unused space. Expert use of white space helps a designer achieve balance, provides a sense of elegance through simplicity, and focuses the eye on a desired part of the page. Most of all, white space provides a sense of breathing room for the viewer.

More content is usually better, but the presentation of your content has a major impact on how it is consumed, if at all. When the spacing of characters is small, margins are wide and paragraphs run together, copy becomes a much less effective tool to convey the intended purpose of the page to end users. People do not typically react well to rooms in a house full of clutter, so why would they with a Web page?

Image and Branding are important aspects
While it is smart to focus on the value of the actual service, image plays an extremely important role. The most notable brands convey a certain cultural significance, a shared lifestyle and, most importantly, an attitude. Coca-Cola, one of the most identifiable brands on the planet, has branded to the point where it is much more of a culture than a product. If exceptional businesses are supported by great brands, then bad businesses fail because of poorly conceived brands.

Those most successful in design branding understand that logos communicate the essence of an organization and invest heavily in their development.

In a Nutshell
Web design is not something that should be taken lightly. The goal is to strike a balance between client preferences, design principles, and trial-and-error tests based on end-user analytics data. Perhaps it is best not to view Web design as a one time, beginning-to-end project but rather as a continual work in progress.