You may have a fast and beautiful website with great content or an amazing online store. But if your site has a bad user experience or user interface, it won’t be a popular website.
User experience (UX) and user interface (UI) are important for every kind of website.
One of the demanding careers today is a web design and web development.
Designers and developers try to create beautiful websites and applications with great UX and UI. So, that is what you should do on your website.
Also Read: Best Design Resources
Doesn’t matter what platform you use. It must have great UX and UI. So, how can you make your site better?
Well, here are my 7 tips which help you to create a beautiful website. Let’s get to it.
Table of Contents
1. Create A Beautiful Home page
What is the first page people see on your website? It is a home page or a landing page. So, that is the first impression, and yeah, you must have a beautiful home page.
The home page and landing page must be clean, simple, beautiful, and should have important information only.
If it is packed with lots of sections, blocks, and information, the user will not have a good experience.
Don’t oversaturate it with content or colors. It applies to every kind of website like eCommerce, blog, business, app, etc.
A beautiful website should be simple, modern, clean, and on point.
2. Easy Navigation
Want visitors to have a good user experience? Make your website easy to navigate. It is crucial for a website because if it is hard to navigate, then the visitor will never come back.
What do I mean by navigating?
First of all, make sure you have fewer pages.
Many websites delete their pages and combine them to have less because it is easier to navigate through a site.
You have to have essential pages like contact, about, privacy policy but not many unnecessary ones.
For example, let’s say you have a blog.
Apart from essential pages (although you can have contact on the home page and about on the sidebar), you can have a home page and a blog page.
That’s it. Why do you need more?
On the home page, you can have a hero image with a subscription form, testimonials, or courses if you have one, and the latest blog.
Nothing else is needed.
So your navigation bar will be simple like home, blog, and contact. A beautiful website should be simple.
It’s up to you how you design your pages. But avoid too many pages. Try to combine some pages into one if possible. This way, visitors’ final destination will be one click away.
3. Place Fewer Ads
Of course, ads are important because it is one of the main sources of income. But many ads can be annoying.
Also, your site will look unprofessional, and people will think that your goal is to earn money and not to write good content.
So, make sure you have a decent amount of ads.
You can place ads in different locations like between posts, between paragraphs, on the sidebar, in the header.
So, you can place one ad on the header and another one or two on the sidebar.
Depending on your blog page style, you can add ads there two. So if you have a masonry or a grid style, add one advertisement per page.
It will look beautiful and less annoying. And of course, you can place ads between paragraphs. But do not use too many. It is bad.
Use a max of three ads, but it depends on your post length.
For example, you can place one before content, one in the middle, and one in the bottom.
Test different placements yourself and see what looks better and less annoying.
But make sure you have at least one ad on every page (not on about, contact, and privacy policy pages).
4. Avoid Pop-Ups
Well, we can argue about this but this is my personal opinion and I will say – I HATE POPUPS.
I hate when I’m reading something and suddenly a popup jumps. I get annoyed and lose the desire to read more. Also, I always close them.
I don’t remember if I have ever subscribed to a newsletter from popup. I love embedded subscription forms that are on the home page or sidebars.
Yeah, I know that popups work great but I don’t use them and I suggest the same for your beautiful website.
Instead of a pop-up, I like embedded forms. Like on WPSUM’s homepage. You can place them all over the site.
Also Read: Web Design Fundamentals
You can place it in hero image, above navigation, in sidebars, between paragraphs, etc. That way it is not annoying and is more natural. And it converts the same way as the popup does.
But if you want to use a popup then use it on one page or when a visitor leaves the website.
This way it is less annoying.
5. Use Sidebar Wisely
Sidebars are great for blogs. If you customize it properly then it could be a great asset to your beautiful website.
In the sidebar, you can insert ads, subscription forms, about section, popular posts, etc.
Sidebars can improve and grow your site’s page views.
You can insert the latest, popular, or similar post there, and that way people will go there with one click.
Also, a great area to place ads and subscription forms. But don’t saturate it with content.
For example, the sidebar could have an ad, newsletter subscription, link to a course or special post, and can end with another ad.
You can use sidebars on the home page, blog, and post pages. Depends on your website design.
6. Write Readable Posts
The style of your post has a big importance in UX and UI. Good content is not enough. You have to have a style.
With style, I mean how the content is displayed on the screen.
It is better to have narrower width and small paragraphs than wide width and long paragraphs.
Not only it looks clean with the first option but it is also easy to read. Also, it makes the reading experience fast.
Some blogs don’t use sidebars on a post page and they center the content. That is also a great way to display content.
It depends on what kind of website and content you have. You can use both.
Remember that the goal is to have a beautiful website.
7. Update Content Regularly
And the last thing that improves UX is updating posts. And it is a must-do. It makes your site alive.
Imagine a visitor goes to your post and sees that this post was created 9 months ago or 1 year ago.
A visitor will go and search for other, more recent blog posts with similar content. But if a visitor will see that this post was updated recently then he will read it.
Why?
Because we want to read the newest published posts and also, it means that your blog is being updated often.
Also, every day millions of posts are created, and imagine how many of those are in your niche? So, you have to be ahead.
But that does not mean you have to update posts just for updating.
I recommend you go through the posts that were created 4 or 5 months ago. See what you can edit.
Maybe you know more about the subject and add information. You can change images with new and better. It could be anything.
Your posts must be fresh and new. More frequent updates are better. You have to work to have a beautiful website.
Conclusion
Follow these steps and your blog will be fresh and new all the time. Create great content, have a beautiful website. UI & UX are very important aspects of your success.
And it works for every tool or CMS whether it’s WordPress or anything else. Every website needs to have a good, modern design.
