Finding the right website design ideas to deploy is an essential part of succeeding in today’s digital marketplace.
Though we are taught not to judge a book by its cover, your customers will still judge your business by the first impression they get from your website. This is why putting time into thoroughly researching website design ideas is so important.
It takes an average visitor only 50 milliseconds to form an opinion about your website.
If their experience is bad, they leave. For those who stay past the 50 milliseconds, 38% will ultimately exit if the content or layout is unattractive.
Website visitors only want to interact with a website that is attractive, user-friendly, fast, and informative.
This is partially why selecting the right website design ideas that appeal to today’s online consumers can be so challenging.
Many companies fail at first attempts. Perhaps you have spent endless hours staring at a blank canvas or whiteboards. Or perhaps you’ve worked with designers that just don’t get your brand identity.
Let’s look at 10 website design ideas that will get the creative juices flowing and help you better develop a stunning website your customers will love -- websites that get visitors far past the 50 milliseconds hurdle.
Inside of getting granular with our assessment of website design ideas, we’ve chosen to take a bird’s eye view of design, breaking down websites by their design types.
Here is a quick snapshot of the website design ideas we will cover:
Below, we’ve put together a manager’s guide on how to execute these projects.
Alternatively, you can jump ahead to the list of website design ideas here.
While there are acceptable practices that websites should follow, every website is unique. An online business property should expose originality for the business behind it and the target audience that will use it.
Good website designers understand that what works for a restaurant company will not work for a financial advisory firm.
Before diving into the following pool of website design ideas, it's important for us to note here that no project important as website design creation should be developed in a silo away from your marketing, sales, product development and advertising strategies.
These departments will all ultimately work in unison with your online property.
You should begin by identifying your business goals and objectives. What are your short-term, medium-term, and long-term goals?
A clear grasp of your business goals and objectives will help inform KPIs for your website. These KPIs will in turn drive the website design process.
However, the website goals of an e-commerce business are different from those of a news outlet. Similarly, the website goals of a financial advisor are different from those of a restaurant.
At Brevo, we recommend that business goals follow the SMART approach -- Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound -- to translate accurately to your website KPIs.
Every website must have KPIs for measuring success. What does success look like for your business? More subscribers to your mailing list? More orders? Increase in downloads? Increased traffic? More onboarding sessions?
A website designed to maximize traffic (as the primary goal) will look different from a website designed to maximize downloads or onboarding sessions.
Therefore, before exploring our website design ideas, define your website’s goals, objectives, and the KPIs you will use to measure success.
A website directed at young college students will be different from the one directed towards young professionals in the financial industry. What the former considers as attractive may repel the other.
We already said that a website should be attractive and user-friendly, but attractive and friendly to whom? The ‘whom’ makes all the difference.
Without a good grasp of your target audience you may be acting against those you should attract.
One of the earliest steps in the website design process is to clearly define your target audience.
Here, we need to consider demographics, psychographics, behavioral patterns, geographic and sociographic factors.
Once you have a handle on your target audience, create your buyer personas. A buyer persona is a fictional representation of your ideal customer.
For example, suppose you target professionals in the finance industry (target audience). In this case, a buyer persona can be: Lucy, 34, female, reads Bloomberg first thing in the morning, works 70 hours in a week, finds it hard to spend time with her kids, etc.
The buyer persona gives flesh and blood to your target audience. Identify your personas’ pain points and define how your product or service solves their problem.
You need to keep this buyer persona in mind when exploring website design ideas.
How will this or that element appeal to Lucy? Will Lucy find this or that element useful? Those are the kind of questions that must be in your mind.
The buyer’s journey defines the step your buyer persona will take to become a loyal customer. The standard buyer’s journey moves from awareness to consideration to decision.
At the awareness stage, the potential buyer becomes aware of your brand.
The consideration stage is where the potential buyer evaluates your product and service offerings and compares your brand to competitors.
At the decision stage, the potential buyer has chosen your brand. He is ready to become a paying customer.
There is a buyer’s journey for every buyer persona.
What path will Lucy take to purchase your home cleaning service, for example? Where will the awareness take place? When is she looking for home cleaning solutions on Google? Does she find them through a recommendation from a friend? A Facebook ad?
An essential part of your buyer’s journey is identifying when and where your buyer persona will land on your website.
Will it be at the awareness stage, consideration stage, or decision stage? Where will this buyer persona land on your website? Your homepage, pathway page, or information page?
You must design your website with your buyer’s journey in mind.
The first impact of your buyer’s journey is the site structure.
The site structure details the architecture of your website - how everything is linked to everything else.
Every website begins with a homepage. The rest of the structure depends on your buyer’s journey.
Start by creating your site structure on a whiteboard or in a notebook. Once you create a good site structure, choosing the best website design ideas will become easier.
Before you start creating the website’s individual pages, ensure you have an SEO strategy that will guide the whole process. A solid SEO plan will include on-page and off-page/technical SEO.
As you define your site structure, start identifying the SEO tips you would implement at every level of your site structure -- from the homepage to product pages to blog posts.
Now that we have reviewed how to execute a website project, let’s start by examining 10 actionable website design ideas that will help you create stunning websites that best fit your target audience and buyer personas.
First on our list of website design ideas is the use of panoramic hero banners.
These days, there is a noticeable uptick in the popularity of hero banners on websites’ homepages.
Hero banners are big and bold, creating a visual impact that attracts website users. They also have clear calls to action that are useful for website visitors at the decision stage.
Good hero banners combined with great copywriting can turn your homepage into a direct customer acquisition tool. They help a brand communicate its unique selling proposition (USP) at the very forefront of the website -- the homepage.
Here is an example of a good hero banner from Apple. There is a large image of the iPhone 12 Pro and a link to learn more about the phone, as well as another link to the store.
When you get on this website, you instantly know what it is all about -- the iPhone 12 Pro text is large enough for anyone to see.
It has enough text to communicate some features of the phone, but not too much to weaken the simplicity and appeal.
The homepage of Google Chrome is another good example.
The bold text face and logo quickly identifies the brand behind the website. The CTA (call to action) is simple and straightforward, with a visual hierarchy that shows its importance.
Adding an image that shows Google Chrome at work is a great marketing idea that other SaaS companies can easily adopt.
If you sell a product that is at the heart of your brand, your website should reflect this emphasis.
The days of using small product images with a large chunk of text are over.
This is because website creators have discovered that images can create a more significant emotional impact than a block of text.
Research by Brain Rules shows that when a relevant image accompanies a piece of text, people retain 65% of the information. They only remember 10% when there is no image.
On the ETQ-Amsterdam homepage, there is a massive product image that is instantly appealing.
ETQ is a footwear e-commerce store. The image of the footwear dominates the page, putting the focus on the brand’s product. There are even more footwear images below and only a minimal amount of text.
Because of the nature of the business, ETQ uses an image carousel rather than a hero banner. From image to image, there are massive pictures that put the product at the center of the brand.
Videos on a landing page increase conversions by 80% or more and boost the chances of a page 1 ranking by 53%.
The average clickthrough-rate (CTR) for websites with videos (4.8%) is higher than those without videos (2.9%).
As a result, many website creators now use videos as the background of a website’s homepage. Background videos are visually appealing and engaging. They are also difficult to ignore.
If done well, background videos can increase the time a visitor spends on your website.
For example, art studio Nowness uses a documentary as a background video on its website. It also happens to be an excellent showcase of the kind of art production work they do.
Using six-minute videos like this will quickly capture the attention of your visitors.
After spending six minutes on the website, the chances of them further browsing the website will only increase.
Next are walkthrough videos. These are instructional videos that explain how to use a product or service.
Because videos are engaging and interactive, website designers use walkthrough videos to accompany the text on their websites.
Showing someone how to do something is better than telling them how.
Or, in popular parlance, “show don’t tell.”
Overflow is a SaaS product for creating interactive user flow diagrams to tell a story.
There is a walkthrough video on Overflow’s homepage that shows visitors how the software works and what they can accomplish with it.
Grammarly also uses a walkthrough video to show how their editing software works in real-time.
Including walkthrough videos can help you increase engagement with website visitors and possibly boost conversion rates.
The logic is simple: We buy what we understand.
Parallax scrolling is a technique where different elements of a website move at different speeds.
The most common use of parallax scrolling is when the background image moves at a slower speed than the foreground when you are scrolling through a website.
Parallax scrolling adds depth and movement to the visitor’s experience, creating more engagement and immersion.
The Great Agency, a branding and marketing agency, uses parallax scrolling on its website.
The first screenshot is above the fold.
But as you scroll downwards, the foreground begins to give way to the background.
Color changes are another way to transition from one part of a website to the other.
As the visitor moves around your site, the color changes.
This color change adds to the attractiveness of the site.
Nick Jones is an interface prototyper and designer. And Narrow Design is Nick Jone’s portfolio website.
Nick does a great job using color change transitions as visitors move from one section to another in his site.
In truth, these days animation should always be present on a website design ideas list.
From our experience, animations greatly help improve the dynamism of a website.
For example, Your Plan, Your Planet is a sustainability program sponsored and organized by Google.
On the homepage of this website, there are hover animations, CSS3, and storytelling animations.
All of these elements greatly add value to the user experience by creating a more dynamic introduction to your brand.
Species in Pieces is designed for the protection of endangered species.
Here, the site uses transition animations and micro animations to deliver a unique and dynamic experience for users.
Animations like this are so effective because they send signals to the brain that a function has been applied.
They also add visual cues that aid the browsing/reading experience.
Minimalism is a growing trend in website design. A minimalist web design seeks to simplify the user interface by removing all superfluous elements.
When ideally executed, minimalism removes clutter on the website to improve the user experience.
A minimalist website is easy to navigate and SEO-friendly. They also load faster and hardly break down.
Movie Mark is a digital growth marketing agency that designs and implements marketing strategies for clients.
Their website uses a minimalist approach that allows the company to better focus on their core USPs.
Evoulve, a company that turns emerging technologies into marketable products, is an excellent example of minimalist website design.
Overall, such minimalist websites are easy for website visitors to use and recall.
Typography combines elements like font, color, size, and layout to increase clarity and visual appeal of a site.
The typography of a website can also convey certain messages and elicit certain emotions better than other website designs.
Ultimately, this is an excellent way to create visual hierarchy and improve users’ experience.
The website of Pittori Di Cinema, a cinema painting company is an excellent example of large typography.
The large typography makes the homepage eye-catching and places the focus on the content. The use of large typefaces makes the content attention-grabbing and dramatic.
Visage, a graphics design SaaS platform, uses typography to highlight important content and create a visual hierarchy on its website.
There is a deliberate attempt to improve the users’ experience from alignment to font type and size.
One-page websites are becoming more trendy.
Designers love one-page websites because they are mobile-friendly and load faster.
In addition to hassle-free surfing, it’s also easy to tell a brand story through a one-page website.
Viesus is an image enhancement software that uses a one-page website to communicate its brand story.
Just take a look at how clear they can communicate their brand values in just one scroll.
It’s now time to create a concept from one of these website design ideas that will work best for your business.
Brevo is a creative marketing agency that helps businesses and organizations create stunning websites that produce results.
Contact us to discuss which website design ideas will work best for you.
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