News & Insights

Four Principles of A Good Website

In this digital age, an online presence is crucial not just in helping companies strengthen their credibility as a business, it also conveys a good first impression about your brand by instilling confidence and professionalism. Therefore it is a crucial part of your company’s branding and marketing toolkit.

1. Purpose and utility
A website drives traffic and converts visitors into prospects or better, advocates of your brand. It is important to identify the various profiles of visitors to your site and create a clear impetus to drive them to take action. This is sometimes done through campaign-specific landing pages or your corporate website, in essence an advertising landing page for your brand.
Therefore, your corporate website should communicate what your brand stands for, such as your brand vision, values and strategy, as well as the scope of products and services. Ideally, testimonials and even case studies can be included to convince visitors that you deserve their trust.
As a key component of your brand, a consistent visual design (colours, style) that matches your company’s style will help you fulfil your website’s purpose, be it to increase awareness about the services you offer or offer more information about your company’s milestones and achievements.

2. Quality and relevance
“Content is king” applies to your corporate website, just like any other brand promotional collateral. Complement aesthetically powerful design with quality content to deliver an important message about your company culture, or the uniqueness of your product or service. This information should also feel uniform with what can be found on your other social touchpoints (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.).
Establish credibility through your website and convey creativity, social and ethical responsibility, innovation or a beautiful commitment to tradition, depending on how you want to differentiate your brand and whether yours is a business-to-business (B2B) or business-to-consumer (B2C) company. Given that user attention spans are short, copy text need not be laboriously lengthy, but should be compelling enough to make visitors stay once they land on your home page.
Communicate clearly by reducing the cognitive efforts needed on the part of your user. This can be done by taking into account legibility, readability and screen sizes used. Make visitors recall what they already know for enhanced engagement, by using industry words that are well-understood. Use language and keywords that are familiar to your target users and avoid too many different typefaces!

3. Drawing eyeballs through dynamic content
With the option of using both static and dynamic content, the latter tends to capture user attention better and lead them to convert. Since you will have just milliseconds to hold their attention on your page, make good use of elements such as edges, patterns and motions to attract eyeballs and get key message(s) across, and inspire them to take intended action steps! Think clear, simple instructions and attractive call-to-action buttons.
Through the use of such minimal visual cues and elements that are purposeful and relevant to your users, you can keep things breezy and create an intuitive web experience!

4. Visual hierarchy
Organisation is an important principle of good design founded on visual hierarchy, or our natural eye tendencies. Instead of leaving users scratching their heads, create a clear and succinct structure that makes it easy to follow and understand for the user, i.e. lead your user to interact with your site using a clear and logical structure. For example, having a top-down menus with progressive disclosure (such as when user hovers over a button) or sticky navigation (top menu stays on top, even as user scrolls down).
Key value propositions are usually placed right at the top or at a prominent position, and breadcrumb trails can be included to allow users to go back to your home page. This empowers them with a greater sense of control and allows users to navigate with ease.

Does your web design partner have the necessary skills to build a site that accomplishes your goals? Our experienced web designers and UX designers have working with regional leading clients across industries since 2009. Partner with 2EZ Asia to unleash a user-centric design that leads to a meaningful and productive experience for your users!