How your website design is helping your content marketing and what areas need improvement, it needs a detailed document and only then you can take specific steps. In recent years, web design become unshakable in our culture. Here are some web design key principles to keep in mind when developing a website with content marketing goals.
A Detailed Content Map to Begin With
Almost every web developer first think about layout, graphics, some other design elements and features to begin with. But, first of all, you should decide on the list of contents that are likely to be delivered at the initial stage. One should begin with a detailed content map to make content discoverable, accessible and crawlable by the search engine. Without ensuring crawlable aspects for the content, your search engine effort is likely to go waste.
- Beginning with a content map you can easily identify the type of content that can drive traffic to your website.
- A content map also allows you to identify the areas of your website that can grab user attention in various sizes of the device display.
Leverage the Power of ‘Gestalt’ Design Principle
Gestalt is a psychological term that refers to the principle of our visual perception. These principles only allow better design addressing user perception and cognitive thinking.
Let us see the important role this principle can play in web design.
- Incorporating Human Emotion: Every design element like font, color and shape allow evoking different emotions that help connecting perceptions.
- Appealing Psychologically with Shape, Color and Space: Often color, shape, direction, space, font and background elements combined together make a negative or positive impression on the viewer. The design is basically the art of mastering these elements to make a positive impression.
- Functional Design: People visit a website primarily for content and what happens if the clutter of visual elements creates a repulsion forcing them to leave? So, from a functional perspective, design should enhance visibility, discovery, accessibility and readability of the content.
Mobile Friendly or Responsive Design
Responsible and mobile friendly web design has now become the basic norm any designer has to follow. Mobile web is the main highway of the web now and the majority of web traffic will continue to travel that way. Even if you go for a mobile-only design, it is not that harmful. But, building a web presence without consideration for mobile traffic is a blunder.
Offer Prominent Social Sharing Buttons
Web content can be best shared and become exposed to large niche audience when spread on social networks. The first and most effective way to do this is to integrate all major social sharing buttons in the content pages so that users can share it easily with a click.
Remember, every social platform has its own niche and it is best to choose the social platforms that your target audience is likely to use. For example, Facebook and Twitter are two broad social gateways with general and bigger audience while LinkedIn is more perfect for professionals and business audience. For sharing images, Pinterest and Instagram are great platforms and for video content you have YouTube.
Add Dynamic Commenting Capabilities
Human beings are intrinsically talkative or better to say, argumentative. Comments engage people on the page. Moreover, if a visitor scrolls through the page reading contents or eventually participating in it, he can end up spending more time on page. This average time spent on a site is a crucial aspect for Google and other search engines to reward sites with ranks.
- A dynamic commenting system that allows robust capability like showing Facebook profile picture instantly beside their comment can add more value to such engagement tactic.
- Another important requirement is to respond to any comment and mailing them when their comments get a reply.
Focusing on Business Conversion
At the end of the day, it is the business conversion that should get the focus. Every content marketer wants traffic and more user engagement only to drive them towards the business goals. Converting the consumers of content into customers involves an array of maneuvers.
- Make a design of author bio box allowing authors telling about themselves to readers and viewers and offering a direct mail link for further interaction.
- Design widgets displaying relevant products in relation to the content. Place the widget at the bottom of the content post.
- Furthermore, you can include ad banners that are relevant and related to content.
- While exercising these business-focused maneuvers always ensure optimum visibility of the content on the respective page.
Emphasis on Visual Content
Visuals are more powerful contents because they tell more in less time. These days all around the web there is an increasing emphasis on visual content. Visual contents empower communication and create instant engagement. The question is how well you can optimize visual contents to get more impressive results.
- Visual elements help to boost your social media presence.
- Visual content can make brand impression better and enhances the chances of business conversion.
- It also have far higher chances of going viral.
- Visuals allow creating a robust social presence, especially with persistent image ad video posts on visually engaging social platforms like Pinterest and YouTube.
- Transforming boring statistics and facts into logically presented infographics can create more engagement ad positive response.
To Conclude,
The above key principles can be utilized to various mediums, so work with your designer to establish the goals and the intent of your next web design project.
Author Bio
Keval Padia is a Founder & CEO of Save Contact Form 7 and Nimblechapps, a fast-growing web app development and mobile app development company. The current innovation and updates of the field lures him to express his views and thoughts on certain topics.