Website trends come and go, and when you’re investing in your website you want it to look great and work brilliantly. Make it too ‘on trend’ and it may not have all the functions you want. Make it too functional and you may lose some of the design aspects which make the site completely tailored to you. It can be a puzzle getting it right and how good the end result is will often depend on the skills of the person designing and building the website.
Here are some ways to balance creativity and functionality.
Work out what you really need from your website functions.
Wanting all the bells and whistles on your website can be a really normal thing, particularly when you’re paying a lot for your website. Working in WordPress we use plugins to achieve these functions. You can get a plugin for anything these days - want forms which take payments? There’s a plugin for that, want to take bookings directly from your website? You guessed it, a plugin does that. Want to connect to a drop shipping store, or have coupons or create affiliate accounts….. plugins again. The thing is, the more you overload a website with various plugins, the slower the website will be, the more likely of there being a code clash and the higher chances it’s going to be a terrible user experience and at some point, the website will break, costing a lot of time and money to get it back up and running.
A good website designer, won’t just take your instructions and build the website for you, they’ll use their expertise to work out what it is you really need from the website functionality, then they’ll build in a way which complements you and your offering, whilst offering a great user experience.
Strip things back as much as you can.
We’re all entranced by websites which look fantastic and have a beautiful design. Creating the design at the cost of other, vital website aspects will turn your ideal clients off, quicker than it takes your website to load.
Loading speed is one of the most vital aspects of website design. Your website should load fast, really fast and it should have certain elements stripped back so it loads well, and looks good on mobiles. With just over 63% of website traffic coming from mobiles, many of them when out and about so being delivered on a 4g or 5g connection, if your website doesn’t load quickly then your ideal clients will log off and find a website which does load well.
When we add a lot of different functions to websites, it causes slow loading of the website as the server has to deliver all the different codes from the plugins, as well as the website itself. If you want to test this theory, take one of the free cookies notices, configure it for your website and run a speed test. Then disable it, clear the cache and run the speed test again. You’ll be surprised at the difference it makes.
Now, I’m not saying don’t have a cookies notice on your website, particularly if you do use cookies, but test different ones to see which ones give the best speed delivery and, if you don’t have tracking on the website you won’t need a notice (do run a test first to make sure you stay compliant).
Don’t over-animate things.
You know when you’re on a website and as you scroll to each section, the text moves and flies in? Or it appears as if by magic? Some people love it, many others’ don’t. Research over the years has shown it can cause motion sickness and stops people engaging with a website. It also takes more load time on the server, so unless you work with a designer who consistently achieves high results for websites with animation, I’d leave this one alone.
The occasional animation on a website is cool and I’m not saying a blanket ’no’ to all animation. Whether it’s a column, text block or image flying in, or a button wiggling to get your attention, use it sparingly as too much animation will turn your potential customers off.
Images and videos are great; carousels and sliders are not.
If I had £1 for every time a customer asked for a carousel or a slider and a further £1 for explaining why they ar
e the most hated elements in the industry…. Well, you get the idea - I’d be a lot richer than I am now.
Here’s why carousels and sliders are not recommended on websites:
They cause a big weight on the server.
Instead of having just one image or video in an element, there are several. All this takes up vital server space and increases the size of your website.
They cause super-slow page loading.
Every time you load the website page it has to load all of the images or videos on the slider or carousel at the same time. This happens whether someone is looking through all of them or not.
They don’t deliver the information in good time.
Everyone’s reading speed is different and we can’t set the sliders or carousels to be intuitive to each visitor. For some, they may read the information quickly then have a long wait for the next slide. For others, the slides may be going too quickly and frustration builds if they can’t get all the information.
They’re not accessible.
Out of everything you want for your website, you want it to be accessible. This means that it’s dyslexia friendly, partially sighted people can gather the information from it easily and it can be accessed by screen readers. Your website should also be setup so it’s useable for people who have difficultly with fine motor skills. If you don’t have navigation on your slider or carousel, it’s not considered accessible and most of the navigation options, such as bullets and arrows, fail accessibility standards as they require a high level of fine motor control to use them.
Use the brilliant tools available with your theme.
If you’re unfamiliar with WordPress setups it looks like this:
Platform: WordPress
Theme: This is the framework & design tools with which the website is built
Plugins: These add functionality to the website.
Not all themes are created equal and it’s a good idea to have a chat with your website designer as to which themes they favour and why. Quite a few themes will offer all the tools you need for your website within the theme, meaning you don’t have to layer plugins to get the look and feel you want.
Within the theme will be a wealth of design options for every element of the design; layering colours and patterns, skewing or shadowing on images, adding filters, you name it, the chances are, your theme will be able to do it.
When looking for a website designer for your new website, ask them what their preferred theme is and why. Also ask to see their portfolio, check you like their design style and you can even look up to see how many plugins they use on the websites in their portfolios, which will give you an idea of how skilled the designer is. In most cases, the more plugins they use, the less skills they have and they’re relying on a wealth of plugins to do the heavy lifting. You may find this post useful: How to choose the right designer or developer for your website.
These are my top 5 tips for getting the most out of your new website build. If you’re thinking of having a new website built and would like to explore whether we’re a good fit, book a free, no-obligation 15 minute call with me and I’ll look forward to meeting you on Zoom. Rather chat before a meeting? You can email me directly by clicking here. Or drop me an email through the form on my contact page.
