What Makes a Web Site’s Design Look Good? 7 Ideas for You to Think About

What Makes a Web Site's Design Look Good?

Filling the World Wide Web is web sites with gradients, patterns, animation and more. Lots of them look great!
And then there’s simple web sites that also look great!
We have web sites of all kinds and they all look fantastic.
But, then again, there are other web sites that employ the same principles that look horrible!
Why?

Therefore I have a simple question for you.

What makes a web site’s design look good?

I think this question haunts all web designers who are truly concerned about their work - I know it does me.

So what makes them look good and others with similar principals look bad?

Well, here are seven bits and pieces I’ve noticed that generally work - note: they don’t always work and aren’t always needed.

1: Easy Navigation

Being able to easily navigate a web site is the most important part about a site, if your visitors can’t get around, they won’t stick around.
Example: Toggle - easy, concise, and prominent navigation

Toggle

2: Images

Some sort of high-quality and related photo adds greatly. While photos can help, they’re not for all web sites.
Element Fusion - Web Site Development - a single photo drawing attention to the site’s message.

Element Fusion

3: Graphics

A logo of some kind is necessary for virtually all web sites. Supplementary graphics are helpful as well.
Elixir Graphics is pretty good on both points.

Elixir Graphics

4: Color

Three or more colors working together gives the web site a professional and thought out look. Personally I like web sites with two main colors, a main accent, and one or two subtle accents - if you follow me.
Design Snack is a pretty good example.

Design Snack

5: Engaging Content

Some may say ‘well duh’ to this one, but images, animation, and graphics used in the right setting it is a powerful tool. Keep in mind that such ’spices’ don’t always work for a web site.
Drew Wilson - A nice header and good images in the content. Granted, it’s a portfolio, but it’s still nice.

Drew Wilson

6: Minimalism

Stripping everything off a web site excepting the content is very effective - in most circumstances, but not all. If done right, minimalist web sites can be more effective than the most flash saturated web site out there.
Brandon Muth is a great example of minimalism and color.

Brandon Muth

7: Animation

Animation accents can be very powerful and very dangerous. If used effectively they will give your web site a professional flare - used incorrectly and they will slow down your site and frustrate your visitors (this is actually one of my biggest pet peevs) Make sure your animation is fast loading and doesn’t take forever to zip across the screen - your visitors are interested in your content more than your fancy animation.
Deadly Viper is a great example of using a little animation, but not too much.

Deadly Viper

I’ve listed just about all components of web design, haven’t I?

Design is a fickle thing.

Be careful with what elements you use in your design.
Design works in some circumstances and not others.

The problem designers have is choosing which components for which site.

In upcoming posts I plan on examining which should be used and when.
So stay tuned.

Img: Stages by Clearly Ambiguous

 

9 Responses to “What Makes a Web Site’s Design Look Good? 7 Ideas for You to Think About”

  • Some nice links. Maybe consider putting some screen shots in your posts of the examples. As a reader I would prefer to not have to link off to see what your talking about. Thanks.

     

  • Yeah…
    Honestly, I didn’t feel like taking screen shots and sizing them when I wrote the post.
    But thanks for the pointer, I went ahead and added screen shots.
    It does look a lot better…

     

  • Curious, curious. What’s the difference between images, photos and graphics? I thought they are the same?

     

  • photo is short for photograph which is taken with a camera. images could be graphics, i think. for ex. those screen shots are images. graphics are things that could have been made on the computer(hence “graphic design”). correct me if i’m wrong brian.

     

  • Yeah, you’ve got it Grace!
    A graphic is pure illustration done with a program like Illustrator or Photoshop. Here’s an example.
    A photo is something taken with a camera. Example.
    An image can be one or the other, or both! Here’s a clever example.

    Although, I must point out that everyone will define these three slightly different, this is just how I define them.

     

  • I got the points now. Thanks Brian and Grace. I will keep this post for future reference. Cheers.

     

  • [...] If you are thinking about designing your blog by yourself then you need to check his post about What Makes A Website’s Design Look Good. [...]

     

  • Great article. Like yourself, I am concerned about my work and meeting required standards and agree with everything you said, I really like your designs too I thought that the only thing missing off your list, since you included navigation which is technically a Usability issue, was Accessibility.

    Inaccessible sites effectively cut out the percentage of your potential user base tat either have vision impairment or can’t use a pointing tool like a mouse and Accessibility is a vital influence on website design.

    A benefit of it is that a well built, Usable, Accessible site is practically perfectly built for Search Engine optimisation, all you need are those links and you’re set.

    Rich

     

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