Category Archives: Web design

According to Ericsson Mobility Report, “the level of stress caused by mobile speed delays is similar to that of watching a horror movie or solving a math problem and greater than standing at the edge of a virtual cliff”.

Your website is the face of your business to the online world. Just like the accessibility of your office to your customers, your website leaves a lasting impression on your customer’s minds. The design and overall look-and-feel play an important role in this aspect. But what paves the way is the loading time. According to a recent study from Kissmetrics.com, 79% of online shoppers say they won’t go back to a website if they’ve had trouble with load speed. A fast website is perceived as a professional one; though that ideology is purely psychological, speed is directly connected to performance and better performance is seen as the fruit of the effort put forth in creating the website.

Let us ask ourselves, aren’t we all looking for immediate answers and quick results? We are more likely to purchase a product from a website or book a service consultation, if the website moves smoothly from one page to another, shift from one screen to another in a seamless fashion. We tend to trust websites that are interactive and spontaneous. Speed is, therefore, linked with user experience, and the better the user experience, the better the conversion rates. Lookers turn to buyers when users can find what they want, and they can find it fast.

Performance is about retaining existing customers. For example, Pinterest reduced perceived wait times by 40%, and this increased search engine traffic and sign-ups by 15%. COOK reduced average page load time by 850 milliseconds which increased conversions by 7%, decreased bounce rates by 7%, and increased pages per session by 10%. Even Google SEO ranks websites based on speed.

Hence, it’s all about speed.

• Image Optimization

The images in any webpages take up more space and thereby more time to load than ordinary text. But that does not degrade their purpose at all. Images add more visual perspective to our web pages than text can bring. So, it is important to use reasonable, supported formats to upload images that have been compressed for a webpage.

It is also advised to use applications that can render multiple images at a single HTTP request. The images are stored as a single large file. This also reduces the time taken to process various requests and their responses.

• Specify Image Dimensions

It is important to specify the dimensions of images so that it will become easier for the webpage to load the image in a placeholder of a given breadth and height, instead of forcing the browser to load the entire image. This will help reduce the time taken to load as the browser understands clearly the space occupied by the image and can load the other parts of the webpage while the image is getting displayed.

• Optimizing code using best practices

This is one of the effective ways to increase the performance of the website that can be done during the development stage itself. Using the right logic can help reduce the number of lines of code that has to load several variables to operate when it can yield the same results. Also removing unused code that brings no change in the webpage can bring a lot of change in optimizing performance.

• In-memory technology

In-memory technologies are utilized on the server side to optimize performance and increase speed. The frequently accessed information is stored in the RAM so that we do not require to access the database more frequently. For an eCommerce website, calling the database to request information each time can prove to be very time-consuming. Also, since RAM is 10 times faster than hard disk when it comes to input output.

• Reducing round trips to access files

This technique can be used in image optimization and loading JavaScript external files. Multiples JavaScript files can be combined into a single file and accessed in one request. This method is a decision taken between one request or multiple trips to render elements of a webpage and carry out processes.

• Reduce server response time

Choosing the right server based on the needs of the organization is the key. Choosing hosting services must be based on the RAM, hard drive, and CPU storage it can provide the website with. On top of that, it is required to choose between the most feasible options when it comes to hosting:

• Shared Hosting- It is the cheapest option, but it compromises on the speed aspect to provide ample shared resources at a low cost.
• VPS Hosting- Virtual Private Hosting is where the entire server is divided into various independent servers. This will help the organizations on a low budget have their dedicated resources instead of sharing with other websites. Therefore, the network traffic will not be shared and will not affect the speed.
• Dedicated Hosting- This is an expensive option and can be used by large corporations that can handle the responsibility of having and maintaining their resources.
• Minimize time to first byte- Browser Caching

Just like measuring the amount of time taken for an entire webpage to load, it is important to look at the time taken for the webpage to start loading, known as Time To First Byte(TTFB). Google recommends a 200ms TTFB for a webpage to load.

This can be best achieved by loading parts of the website or the previously loaded website in its entirety in the browser’s cache. This way, the webpage can load without having to send out HTTP requests to the server. In a WordPress site, it is possible to enable “Page Cache” at the developer end so that the pages are automatically cached at the client’s end.

• Content Delivery Network

Content Delivery Network (CDN) is viewed as the ultimate solution to eliminate issues related to server response time due to problems like geographical barriers. Using CDN, the website is cached in a global server from your own. When a user sends a request, the server closest to them attends their request. This can also help eliminate the issues caused by network traffic flowing to a single file.

• Reduce external scripts

JavaScript and CSS external scripts or any other embedded services for that matter can take their own time to call and render, contributing to the load time. If the services and scripts are not worth the wait time expended, it is better to remove or uninstall them.

One can tap the external scripts that are sending requests by taking a look at the network tab of chrome developer tools.

• Using Plugins and blocks

Plugins and blocks can improve the speed and minimize redirects and pop-up advertisements on the site. Each redirect is a separate request and can contribute to downgrading performance. Likewise, blocking pop-up ads can also add to enhancing user experience.

It is also important to note that usage of too many plugins can do more harm than good.

Not only in the case of plugins but optimizing website speed, in general, is all about understanding your website inside out and creating a balance between what is most required and how effectively it can be served. It is about running speed checks frequently to measure where the weaknesses lie and to put one’s best efforts to correct them.

Artificial Intelligence is described as a task performed by software, application, program, or by a machine in the same way as a human being would accomplish the task. It is the development of machines and computers to perform tasks that require human intelligence. These tasks can involve planning, decision making, execution. AI has had a significant impact on many sectors and how businesses function and improve their operations and strategies.

AI and customer experience are both crucial to the success of any business today and AI has contributed in a big way to the improvements in customer experience.

We will explore how AI-based web design can improve the customer experience.

Web design is more than just a visual element. It is very important to provide practical, interactive, and intuitive elements when designing a website. AI in web design has been there for a while and has changed the way how things work. Some consider it a positive step towards creating machine learning consciousness while others feel that the human element is more important when it comes to design. For web design, AI can help create templates without any kind of human intervention. The software can scan design trends and market data to come up with the most popular trends that can be integrated with web design. Mentioned below are some of the techniques used to improve customer experience.

• Faster design and demand fulfillment – improving and enhancing customer experience involves fulfilling consumer demands. Be it a demand for better navigation of a dark interface, these demands need to be catered to enhance the experience. Hence, machine learning is used to identify the requirements of the client and match them with the existing market trends to create the design faster. It is for the designer to ensure to keep in mind the needs of the clients, market requirements, and customer demand while designing to create a synergy between all three elements at a faster rate.
• Optimum utilization of data – with the vast volume of data that is generated, AI comes to the rescue. This data can be very useful in creating web designs that bring real value to any business. In today’s date, it is very important to ensure people get what they are looking for and that is when a careful analysis of data needs to be done. This is where AI plays a crucial role. AI can help in sorting the data based on demographics. It can help put together core insights and help generate a design that can help businesses create a website that is all about its users thereby improving the customer experience.
• Improvement in UX – it is an important element of customer experience strategy. Having a functional website is not enough, it needs to look good and cater to the individual needs of its customers. There are four essential elements of a customer experience model- value, desirability, usability, and adaptability. While templates are made using AI, all these elements are factored in to create an interface that not only looks good but also adds value to the customer experience as well as business operations.
• Personalization – content personalization is a great way of improving and establishing any business as a customer experience leader. Machine learning can help e-commerce and other websites in providing personalized suggestions to its users. With the data that is collected, Ai can be used to identify the online behavioral pattern of a specific demographic and personalize the content to cater to the specific needs and requirements. This not only helps a business connect with its audience but also creates a lasting relationship with them.
• Incorporating new tech in design – with new technologies emerging every day, the relevant must be integrated within the website design to enhance the customer experience. Integrating technologies like voice search, chatbots, and subtitle generation for videos have shown that such technologies within the web design will enhance and improve websites.
• Effective marketing – with machine learning and data, a business can have innumerable opportunities, especially for e-commerce. It can help in effective branding and marketing based on customer behavior by evaluating different parameters like the type of product that the customer needs, its price, the pace the customer likes to buy, and lots more.

Whether combining web design and artificial intelligence is healthy or not is an ongoing argument. Keeping in mind the current trends integration of AI in design has shown great potential in improving customer experience. The future will witness the use of AI across all industries to grow their business.

The worldwide web is the best and the most effective way to promote and market your business.

What is most important is not just developing a website, but to update it to keep it relevant, fast, and safe. Trends in web design are always evolving so are the trends in the products and services you offer. Updating content is crucial in staying relevant for people searching for you. Additionally, search engines like Google are constantly updating their algorithms to provide the best possible search results. Hence, it is critical to revisit your web design and content to stay relevant and maintain your site rankings.

In this article, we will look at 5 reasons why we should revisit website content

1. Updated content leads to more traffic – The first impression of any website is the overall look, but a visitor is also looking for information on your website and that is why they are there. Keeping the content of the website updated helps in determining the effectiveness of the website and building trust with the customers. It also helps in building the domain authority of your website in your niche. It is the content of the websites that is crucial for its success. It should be simple, on-target, and effective to engage the visitor in the 2 to 4 seconds window and hopefully convert them into customers.
2. Keywords Trends are evolving – Monitoring keyword trends and updating content is important for Search Engine Optimization. Updating the copy of the website regularly ensures that the outdated keywords are updated with the current relevant ones to drive traffic to the site. How people search and the way they search has changed drastically over the last few years with the increasing use of mobile devices. Keeping tabs on search trends will ensure that the website delivers the most relevant information to your audience.
3. Updated content leads to frequent indexing – The more frequently you update the website with new articles, updated content, new pages, or downloads, the more frequently the search engine will bring up your site. This helps in achieving higher rankings based on content. A website is indexed based upon various factors like incoming links to the site, the keywords used and how often is the website updated. With every update, the search engine notices and re-arranges the site ranking. Thus, updating the content regularly increases the chances of a higher ranking of the website. Quality content is the key.
4. Customers problems have evolved and so have the solutions you provide – The content on the website should empathize with its audience and help in providing a solution for their problem. It is important to get a clear understanding of what the audience is looking for by getting into their shoes. The problem they face now may be very different from what they have faced in the past and the website needs to reflect that. E.g. COVID 19 has presented companies with the challenge of setting up and managing remote working. The problems evolved overnight and the focus shifted to providing cybersecurity for home setups. The websites providing solutions had to address these issues with the content on their website to stay relevant and present themselves as experts. As the business grows and expands, so does the consumer demand in your niche. The content on the website should be updated to reflect the needs of the clients and how best you can meet them.
5. The competition is way ahead of you – It is important to stand back and look at your website and do a comparison of it with your competitors’ websites to see how they address the problems of the audience. Do they present themselves more convincingly with their offering? What makes them more trustworthy in your niche? Or are they simply better in providing the product and services? A critical analysis of your website will help you in reorganizing the content, focus on providing the solutions which the audience is looking for in a more empathetic manner and redesign the site layout to get ahead of the competition.

A website is a very important tool. It gives an overview of what your business is about. Investing time and money and thought into its content should be one of the top priorities for your business. Hope this article will help you relook at your website and its content and make the necessary changes to gain the maximum out of your website.

Design principles are widely accepted guidelines, laws, and design considerations that the designers apply with discretion. In other words, they are fundamental pieces of advice for the designer to make easy-to-use, eye-catching designs. These are applied when creating, selecting, and organizing elements and features in the work. In a UX design, it is crucial to find ways to improve usability, influence perception, increase appeal, teach users, and make effective design decisions for projects.

Top UX design principles to keep in mind while designing the website

1. Know your user and their needs – A website is only as good as its user’s experience. The focus of all UX design principles is on users throughout the design process, understanding their needs, expectations, motivations, and frustrations thereby making it clear that the website design should work on providing and improving the users’ experience with the product and services. A clear understanding of these will help the designer to build and focus on the personas throughout the design process. It is important to know what the users are looking for in a design.
2. Content is supreme – To give a website a more meaningful direction, it is important to focus on crafting a story of a brand or a product before getting into the visual design phase of a website. Telling a story can connect people to an idea or a product or service. Start with planning the content and then move around designing the website.
3. Have a clear hierarchy – It is one of the best tools for designers to help a user smoothly navigate throughout the design easily. There are two different hierarchies involved in UX design for a website.

• The first hierarchy relates to information with the focus on how the content is organized across the website. This mainly refers to a primary navigation menu that includes the main sections. This is the menu which you notice when you arrive on a site. As you click on each item, what you see is the secondary menu that gets more specific moving you down the information hierarchy.
• The visual hierarchy is the way the designer helps the user navigate more easily with a section or a page. Visual hierarchy requires the more important content to stand out like for instance, headings are typically larger than the body text and often use a different font. Similarly, interactive elements use different colours to draw attention to its interactiveness.

4. Consistency – Users expect products to be consistent with similar products they have used in the past. The more familiar the product, the more easily the users will learn and have a better experience without any additional learning cost. This consistency makes the design process easier for the designers as they don’t have to reinvent new designs with every project.
5. Understand accessibility – An important rule to keep in mind while designing a website or an app is accessibility. It is for the designer to make sure that the design is usable for as many people as possible including people with disabilities. Accessibility can mean many things at the interface level. From the ease of keyboard navigation and speech input technology to controlled animation for photosensitive user amongst other things. Remove any hurdles in the design layout for easy navigation.
6. Begin with mobile in mind – A “mobile in mind” approach should be adopted to cater to the needs of the users and not face any issues when scaling up the design. Designers should focus on designing mobile and desktop wireframes at the same time to test the breakpoints.
7. Experiment with animation – Interactive web design and animation can add movement and make the website come to life. Animation, when done well, has been known to help educate the customer about how the website or an app function. It is usually seen that users respond positively to small, unexpected, and playful elements.
8. Ease in finding the right information – The most important information should be the easiest to find. Once the user is acclimatized with the site, more advanced features and technical details can be unveiled. For many sticking to the principle of being minimalistic and showing only what is necessary has proven to work well.
9. User control – Focuses on providing greater flexibility of use and control of where a user is within the design, enhancing UX. An essential part of providing user control is to allow users to backpedal or recover from any errors. For instance, when a user is creating a new item like an email or an event, a cancel button should let them abandon the task. An undo button also comes in handy for reversing an unintended or undesired action. Another way to improve user control is by providing users with ways to improve their efficiency. Keyboard shortcuts are a great way to do this and so does advanced searching help users find what they are looking for more efficiently.
10. Tree-test the prototypes – Tree testing exercising is done to evaluate the performance of the site’s architecture. It helps in understanding if the navigational paths are intuitive, and do they lead the users where they expect to go quickly without any confusion. For example, while browsing for something unique on an e-commerce site is the user able to find it easily, or is it a challenge? The answers to such a question can be found once tree-testing is done.

You want users to come back to your website for the products and services that you offer. The challenge than any web designer faces is to make the experience unique and as smooth as possible. The above UX design principles can surely help you in the right direction to achieving that.

The speed of the website is one of the most important factors leading to a high conversion rate. Fast loading websites gain from higher SEO rankings which have a direct impact on user experience, low bounce rate, engagement as well as conversion rates. Conducting a performance test for any website helps in understanding the responsiveness and the scalability of the website, which have a direct impact on the user experience and the revenue generation.

Before beginning the process of testing a website for its performance, it is important to keep in mind a few considerations.

• One of the most crucial things to understand is the purpose of the website. Is it to provide web services or is being used to sell products and services.
• Understand the reason for testing and what is it that needs to be measured. E.g. response time, number of users, etc.
• Understand customer expectations
• Understand the availability of QA tools and the project schedule.

What are different kinds of performance test that can be conducted for a website?

• Performance test – This is done to check the responsiveness, speed, and scalability of the website
• Load test- this is done to check the behaviour of the website under a certain workload.
• Stress Test – This is to check how the system reacts under extreme load conditions and helps in finding out issues related to memory leaks and synchronization
• Endurance test – This is done to ensure that the system can handle the expected load for a long period of time.
• Capacity test- it is done to understand and check how many users/transactions can be supported at one time.

To conduct Website testing the following tools can be used

1. GTMetrix – A free application that summarizes the page performance based on key indicators of page load speed. It generates scores for webpage performance and gives recommendations to improve it. The key features of this application are:
   • It allows testing the website from 28 different servers located in 7 countries
   • It provides a summary of the key performance indicators
   • Website performance can be tracked through monitoring and it is presented in graphs.
   • It allows checking a webpage on different simulated devices.
   • It allows us to playback webpage loads with videos that help analyze the bottlenecks.

2. Pingdom – Is a free website and performance monitoring tool dedicated to making the web faster and reliable. The key features of this application are:
   • It allows you to examine all parts of the webpage
   • Provides performance overview
   • Traces the performance history as results are saved every time testing is done. Changes over time can be reviewed.
   • Allows testing from multiple locations.

3. DareBoost – Is an online application which analyses and optimizes the website performance. It allows a large number of checkpoints when analysing the site speed. It is mainly designed to reduce page loading time and increase its quality. The key features of this application are:
   • It allows comparison with competitors for website speed.
   • It analyses webpages continuously to detect quality and loading related issues.
   • It enables you to check the user behaviour on the website.
   • You can test the mobile website using this tool.

4. GeekFlare – It is a collection of free tools that are used to test the website for security, Domain Name Server performance, network, and SEO issues. The key features of this application are:

• You can see how fast your server responds to the browser request.
• It allows you to check if your site has a secure header or not.
• It can quickly find out the hosting provider for any website.
• It checks for any broken links on your websites.
• It analyses server preferences, certificate details, supported protocols, etc.

5. SpeedCurve – It is a tool that measures website performance and design. It enables you to debug website performance issues at the page level. The key features of this application are:

• Measure when the most important content renders
• Provides engagement charts and uses the data to understand the impact of page slowdowns on the site’s bounce rate.
• Any metrics can be tracked including conversion rate, A/B testing, and cart size.
• It enables you to debug website performance issues at the page level.
• Helps in creating performance budgets and get alerts.
• It enables you to track the code changes between deploys with the use of its Deploy API.

For analysing the performance of a website, there is a multitude of different tools available. Knowing which ones work best for you will depend on your business needs.

Contact the experts!

Engaging with visitors to a website is just as important as driving traffic to the website. Engagement is not only about attracting visitors but making them stay on the site to achieve your goals by fulfilling their needs. It is one of the most important aspects of website design for understanding the performance and ROI on and is directly linked to the growth of the business. A positive user experience enables trust and builds relationships with prospective customers.

How Does Website Design Impact User Experience?

How the website is perceived by the users and how they interact with it can tell if the site is a success or a failure. The website design can influence the user experience in the following ways:

• A well planned and designed website will ensure that the reader keeps scrolling. This would mean, organizing and grouping content into smaller parts with the use of visuals, banners, and other elements to utilize the white space.
• The first impression always matters. So, grab the attention of the visitor. It takes a split second for a visitor to decide whether they would like to scroll through a website or not. It is important to have high-quality visuals and cohesive design with text organized systematically to hold the attention of the visitor.
• The functionality of a website plays a huge role in the overall user experience. Responsive web design ensures the website and its functions are the same when accessed from different devices.
• Having a well-planned updated website is the key to making an impression on the visitor and presenting the business as professional and reliable. It reflects the clean and professional manner of conducting business.

Having stated how website design can impact user experience, let us look at some of the important elements of a good website design

1. Strong, limited colour pallet – Colour scheme and usage of colours play an important role when it comes to website design. People associate colours with certain things so use colours thoughtfully to make an attractive website. The number of colours used on a website is a very important element as too many colours can be visually distracting. A Simplified colour scheme with 2 to 3 colours makes it easier to focus and is preferred in modern website design.
2. White Space – It is a term used for the space that acts as a buffer between all the elements on the page including sidebars, margins, etc. There should be ample room around various elements on the website for a clean and organised look. As the current trend in website design is all about minimalistic style, having white space on the website will allow the visitor for easy navigation.
3. Tell a Story – As mentioned earlier, a good website design should be able to attract the attention of the visitor and have them scroll down the page. This can be achieved through the use of visuals that help tell a story and captivate the audience. Video is another source to introduce the brand to the first-time visitor and provide information about the product and services. Graphs, charts, and data visuals help in putting across information in a more attractive way rather than content that carries all the information in text form. Finally, the words used on the website should complement the storytelling and guide users.
4. Offer a Search Bar – People browsing the website are usually looking for specific information. Engage them by helping them find what they are looking for swiftly. The search bar should be placed where visitors would expect it to be which is the top right corner of the page. Features like auto-suggest and drop-down menu can enhance the user experience.
5. Loading time for the website – If the speed at which a site load is slow, then the engagement will suffer. According to Think with Google, 53 percent of the people leave a mobile page if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. Similarly, 47 percent of people expect a desktop page to load in 2 seconds or less. As the load time increases the bounce rate increases too. The speed of the website can be increased by using compressed images, enabling browser caching, reduce the number of plugins, reduce server response time, and minimize HTTP requests.
6. Call to Action– Converting visitors into leads and customers is very important for modern website design as websites are meant to connect with people who are interested in your offering. Once there is a connection, it is important to retain these visitors. Converting visitors into customers start with the process of having them sign up for e-mail newsletter, subscriptions, free products forms, free consultations, or other exclusive invites. This is only successful when there is a Call to Action. These should be incorporated into website design as they help in gathering important contact information of the visitors to continue interactions and convert them into customers.
7. Organized Card Designs – Currently the focus is on minimalistic website design which has made the use of cards very popular. Cards help in organizing content by grouping together text and image forming an eye-catching element. This helps visitors consume the content more easily. Using cards for website design helps you achieve a clean, organized look while prioritizing user experience.
8. Clean Backend Coding – The modern website design element is the most important from a functionality point of view. Coding dictates the performance of a website. Ensure clean backend coding to help in making it easier to write, read, and maintain how the website functions.
9. User-Friendly Design – The website should be designed keeping in mind the user. It should be user friendly. If the users get a good value from the website and they keep coming back to it, it starts ranking higher on Google search. Always remember to give more importance to the content rather than SEO especially when you are starting out to be able to build a group of loyal and recurring visitors.
10. Elements to boost SEO– Having stated earlier that website should be user friendly, but one must not forget the importance of SEO. There are elements of modern website design that enhance and improve the SEO of the website. These are a part of the backend coding for pages and posts. Meta tags, title tags heading tags, and other HTML coding go a long way in improving the ranking of the website on Google search engine. Ensure to teak and optimize these elements to improve the search ranking.

The aim of any website should be to provide a fluid and intuitive user experience by integrating the 10 elements in the modern website design. Prioritize user experience and ensure website optimization not just for design but for its functionality. If users can easily access your website, engagement will follow.

The download time of your website matters!

7 Reasons to Avoid DIY Web Design

DIY it! That’s the best method to save cash and you learn something new. But let’s be honest we can’t say the same when it comes to web designing.

Designing your website using a custom template is not a good idea. DIY website marketers are smart in that they are going to try and trick you into believing that you have the essential knowledge, insight, and skills to create a website that is unlike any other in your market.

Therefore, we listed 7 reasons you should avoid DIY websites at all costs!

1. Your First Website, Your First Impression 

Quality is key. Your website is going to reflect your company image, so having a well established and maintained website is going to show your audience that you’re not here to play around. You’re a quality business that shows that you care about your online brand enough to invest it in.

This sounds like you’re off to a good start right? Well, you are! But only if you ditch the whole DIY idea. What a professionally built website can do for you is something a DIY website just cannot.

This is also your chance to market your brand! Only a well-conceptualized and designed website will attract and convert clients.

Your current clients and potential clients are going to evaluate your website and online presence before forming an opinion on it. So you want to make sure you leave an impactful impression on them because it’s not hard to switch from you to your competitors.

Some general mistakes that may drive your clients away include:

• Images, gifs, or buttons that take too much time to load. Anything longer than 2 seconds is a no.
• A layout that may be difficult on their eyes. Such as too many bright colours, flashy images or texts.
• A layout that has hard functionality.
• Unprofessional designs that make your business look low-scaled might insinuate that you also don’t possess the right knowledge and skills for the job.

2. Back-End Functionality Matters Too! 

Don’t judge a book by its cover, ever heard that? Well, it’s the same with websites. Using a DIY designer might help you put together a page that looks functional on the surface but trusting the exterior is similar to cleaning your room by shoving everything in the closet!

There’s a lot of behind-the-scenes work you’re going to have to do to develop your site!

But this what we want to avoid. SEO a.k.a search engine optimization is about the code on the back-end of the page just like the content on the front-end. Editing the complex back-end development yourself can lead to something very messy.

Let’s be honest, amateurish coding is probably not the best idea, it’s going to slow down your website and it will destroy the display of your site on desktop and mobile formats.

So, you definitely don’t want to wing this by DIY.

3. Appearance on Mobiles 

Your website must be an all-rounder, it should be compatible with tablets and phones. 53% of web traffic and 63% of retail traffic is made up of mobile users. Also, 85% of adults want mobile phones to display the same quality of the website that a desktop would, this is crucial because 50% of consumers commonly don’t recommend businesses with a poorly designed mobile website.

4. No Impact

Your website needs to be distinctive, impactful, and effective if you want to stand-out in the market. And this is hard to achieve with DIY website designs. Using pre-made templates or a free website developer means that thousands of businesses have already used it. Therefore, it’s ineffective and impossible to stand out!

Plus, DIY website developers usually allow very little customization unless you have a paid account.

5. Not Secure

One of the most concerning things for any business is security, including virtual security for their website. Something DIY website designs seriously lack in, as most DIY websites offer minimum protection and are not able to meet or maintain volumes of high traffic. Therefore, you don’t want to use DIY website makers, your website could be comprised and private information could be leaked.

While professional website creators will provide you with technical resolutions which will help keep your website up and running, plus safe from cyber attacks, hackers, malicious threats, etc. They also improve your website performance!

6. Are You Really Saving Money? 

Contrary to popular belief, DIY website designs aren’t as cheap as we think. The cost of hiring a professional web designer is always the deciding factor when it comes to website designing. But consider this, in the long run, you will have to hire someone, because if you go the DIY way you’re going to make mistakes and you’re going to need someone to fix them for you.

Additionally, professional designers ensure that websites receive traffic. Therefore, they are the ones that can encourage potential clients to look around your website and convert them into your consumers.

Plus, with a DIY website, they are more likely to switch to your customers quickly, and you don’t want that. You want your potential clients to look around and browse through your products or services.

7. Modification Expenses

It’s impossible to start with free DIY website design and upgrade to a more customized design. Most DIY websites are set-up in a way that you cant access and make customizations. For this, you will need a professional website designer and this will definitely end with you having to pay more.

Additionally, some DIY website designers are ‘Hosted Solutions’. Which means you cant transfer your website to another hosting provider. That means if you want to move your website you cant! You’re going to have to build another one.

So just this once, don’t DIY it! It may sound and look easy but you really don’t want to go down that path.

With the growth and evolution of technologies and procedures, web applications and websites have seen a complete makeover. What used to be a static medium has now evolved into a very rich and interactive experience. Every business that has a website needs to ensure that it is engaging and updated at all times. Making an outstanding first impression with effective use of the technology available is paramount in keeping the users connected and engaged to achieve the end objective of them buying the product or services being offered over its competitors.

Although two different facets, User interface, and User Experience are directly related to each other. A good user interface is critical for the success of a website and can be achieved by being a part of the wider user experience process. UI is the essence of all user experiences. It is mainly focused on the experience of the user when they use a website.

Let us delve a little deeper into User Interface and User Experience individually to get a better understanding of both.

User Interface

User Interface is the point at which the user interacts with the website. To achieve effective UI, the user experience should be seamless and it should achieve the maximum desired outcome with the minimum effort on the part of the user.

To achieve a great UI some important steps should be kept in mind.

• Clarity of vision- the clarity of vision for interface design is of prime importance to know how the user’s needs and expectations will be met. It will also help you as a company communicate who you are, what you want to do, and what makes you stand out from your competition.
• Goal Centric Design– the goal of the UI should be focused on satisfying the need of the target audience. Defining the personas, scenario planning and in-depth study of experience maps should be done to understand how the personas will interact with the website.
• User-friendliness- the first encounter of the user with the interface should lead them through simple steps to achieve their goals. This can be achieved through the design layout, keeping the flow of content simple and consistent, and a call for action.
• Assistance- the interface should help and guide the user. The design should be such that it helps the audience to intuitively locate exactly what they are looking for and provide constructive feedback after the completion of the task by the user. The feedback should make them feel comfortable and confident thereby enabling them to develop trust in the brand.
• Recoverability– the interface design should be such to allow the users to repair their faults ranging from edition capabilities for already stored information to the restoring things to a previous state.
• Call to Action– Carefully selected and well-placed Call to Action buttons make a significant difference. As long as the users are guided properly, the push is not required.

By investing in a good UI, the company can achieve its vision to truly understand their customer. They will have the ability to convert users into customers and retaining them, thereby outperforming their competition. This will lead to their customers gaining confidence. Engaging with a website should be a pleasure for all its users.

User Experience

User Experience is how the user feels when they interact with the website. A good UX should appeal to a range of different emotions, be easy to use at the same time, and should be engaging. The best thing for a company to do is to deliver exceptional UX is to step into the shoes of its target users and get a deeper understanding of the needs, wants, and expectations from the product of service.

To achieve a remarkable UX certain steps to be kept in mind

• Simplicity– the website should not only be visibly appealing but the most important elements for a good UX are clarity and ease to use. The site should achieve its goal by providing engaging, relevant, and valuable information through its UI to the direct or redirected traffic to the website from search engines.
• Consistency-The design layout should be consistent across all pages to assist a user to find the information they are looking for. A consistent design enhances the user experience and enables them to navigate the site effectively and quickly.
• Standard and Minimal Design Pattern- tried and tested trends should be followed when it comes to designing the layout of the website and its navigation.

The key information should be put across most adequately and long body text should be avoided.

• Structured Content – arranging and grouping of the information required to put out on each page of the website should be done to give it a consistent and standard structure to ensure its visibility once the user is on the page.
• Personalization-A standard UX design will not work for every user. Users look for experiences that are tailor-made for their needs. Examples of this can be seen with Amazon and its product recommendation system which is aligned with purchase history and previous search. Personalization makes a user feel like the UX is designed just for them and this can have a great influence on customer engagement and retention.

A good UX is easy to understand, navigate, and interact with. It provides the user with the information/ service they are looking for in a pleasing and presentable manner. It leads to higher productivity and increased sales for the company and higher customer satisfaction for the users. It also serves the company in gaining new customers and retaining existing ones.

The primary objective of any business is making money which can be achieved through higher sales and growth of the business. Both UI and UX play a vital role in achieving the objectives by enhancing the user experience and customer satisfaction. Catching a user’s attention in a very short span of time is the key when the competition is intense.

A good UI/UX design helps in gaining the confidence of the user providing them with what they are looking for.