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CMS (Content Management System) is the backbone of modern websites

A very well designed website is crucial to take your business online in this era of ecommerce. The best website designing agencies ensure that right principles are followed while providing website designing services to their customers.

One of the most important trend in website designing is using pre-designed themes and templates with CMS. Bootstrap designs, one page layouts and minimalistic designs are some of the other trends being followed now a days.

There are many content management systems (CMS) available to design a good website. Some of the popular ones are WordPress CMS, Magento for ecommerce,
Shopify for ecommerce and many more. Every CMS platform has it’s own merits and demerits.

So let us examine some of the good principles of good website for 2022 one by one:

1. Short and sweet catchy Domain name for the website

It starts with domain name selection. It should be catchy , short and sweet. It is the one of the most important factor for browsing experience of the user. Never use hyphen, dot or any special characters in the domain name.

Domain names should reflect the functionality of the website. Ideally, it should reflect the nature of the business. Generally, established organizations prefer the brands names as their domain names. If so, many subdomain names can be derived with the main domain name. It is one of the first principles of good website.

2. SEO Keyword as the domain name

It is good idea to have the main keyword as the domain name for the SERP ( Search Engine Result Page) ranking . Even a combination of your brand name and organization name can be used for domain name. Product names , service names or any combination of those can be a good candidate for short , sweet and catchy domain names.

It should not be too similar to your competitor’s domain name. It should not violate trademark and copyright laws of any country. It is desirable out of many principles of good website.

3. Software tools to search best domain names

Domain names are usually searched with domain name generators. Click here to view the list of Best domain name generators.

4. Engaging content as it is said that content is king for websites

The website should focus on the quality of content that is going to be presented to the users. Generally, the purpose of a good website is to promote products and services for the business. Hence, the lead generation and order processing becomes very important from business point of view. However , lead generation and order processing is not applicable for all types of websites like blog. But content is king as far as marketing and promotional activities are concerned. The initial purpose of content is to attract the eyeballs of the visitors. It is one of the most important principles of good website.

5. Simple and minimalistic design with consistent layout

The layout of the website has the same importance as the floor plan of the room while doing interior designing for a room. Ask any interior designer, how much importance they give before starting their job? UI (User Interface) and UX ( User Experience) designers spend a great deal of time while fixing the layout of the website. The website layout should bind all the design elements of the website in a harmonious way. It should not clutter all the design elements , but should evenly distribute it like a good spread of butter on bread.

Also, the layout should not distort when the website is viewed on different screens of various  shapes and sizes. The layout should support all the available devices having different screen sizes. Layout should adjust itself as per the width and height of the device. It is called responsive website designing.

Nowadays , almost 70% web pages are accessed from tabs and smartphones that come in various screen sizes. Web page layout should adjust itself to any type of screen display and size. The responsive design of web pages is a key factor to make or break a web page.

Use of pre-designed themes and templates has created a revolution in website designing services. It is a good idea to start designing website with pre-built theme or template and later modifying and tweaking it to fulfill the customer’s requirement.

Pre-designed themes and templates are available as WordPress themes and templates, HTML templates, Magento templates, Shopify themes and many more. Website themes or so called templates are available for all popular CMS platforms. This is most important out of all principles of good website.

6. Simple color scheme with good font for typography

Simplicity creates the highest degree of beauty. The color scheme of the website should be derived from the brand logo colors of the organization , if possible. As a general rule of thumb, two color combinations creates simple and best designs. We can call it primary color and secondary color. The primary and secondary color should be used for designing web graphic elements like labels, text, buttons, images and other design elements. The Google Fonts is one of the most important products from Google to experiment with different fonts and typography.

Since a website is treated as an interface to the organization, there should be harmony of colors among all the promotional literature e.g. visiting cards, letterheads ,product brochures, email newsletters etc. of the organization as well as the website.

This is also most important out of all principles of good website.

7. Attractive brand logo

Designing a brand logo is an art as well as Feng shui science. A brand logo design is as important as any other element of the good website design. A logo can be a symbol, or it can be a combination of a text and symbol that radiates energy in the universe. It radiates energy to pull eyeballs. Do not underestimate this factor while understanding the principles of good website design.

There are some rule of thumbs for designing superior brand logos :

• Follow KISS principle, Keep It Simple Stupid
• The logo geometry should be simple, unique and should adhere to Feng shui laws.
• Use positive symbols, never use negative symbols.
• Never use personal images, photos, religious symbols, negative symbols.
• Never use violent symbols.
• Again, it is advised to use primary color and secondary color combination to create the brand logo.

8. Simpler page navigation mechanism

Have you ever wondered why all Google websites are so popular and successful ?
They follow the principle of simplicity in website designing and navigation. The principle is called KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid).

All content of the website should be accessible from the front-page of the website.There should not be hidden content giving surprises at the second or subsequent levels of pages.  If the front-page can not accommodate all the content, we can display teaser or introduction of the content at the first page and provide a link  so that more detailed content can be accessed at the second level of navigation. Do not forget to provide the back-link at the end of the content.

Never force users to use the back-link button of the browser. For textual information having many pages as content, provide buttons/links to go to any page right from 1st to last.

Never embed video in the pages without providing control to start/stop video. If the video is auto-play enabled, the stop player button should be visible to the user. Videos should be streamed from CDN (Content Delivery Network) which are readily available in the market like Vimeo. These services allow you to stream videos by embedding in the website pages. Here is a list of the best video streaming services for 2021.

Never embed audio in the web-page which starts playing automatically at loading of the page. If there is a requirement for this, the stop button should be visible to be used for stopping audio. Everybody does not adhere to the same taste of audio or music which you have.

Do not clutter the web-page with many page-links to influence judgment of the user. A common mistake done while providing social media link buttons, is all of the social media buttons are displayed as there are a fairly large number of social media channels available. Use a few which are most common and highly popular. The above are the one of the basic principles of website design.

Never embed audio in the web-page which starts playing automatically at loading of the page. If there is a requirement for this, the stop button should be visible to be used for stopping audio. Everybody does not adhere to the same taste of audio or music which you have.

Do not clutter the web-page with many page-links to influence judgment of the user. A common mistake done while providing social media link buttons, is all of the social media buttons are displayed as there are a fairly large number of social media channels available. Use a few which are most common and highly popular.

9. Use of pre-built theme and content management system

It is wise to use a content management system (CMS) or Software Framework like WordPress, Drupal, Magento, Joomla, CodeIgnitor, Symphony and many others to develop the website.

The reason behind is that they offer pre-built and time tested libraries or plugins and functionalities which need not to be reinvented.

Similarly, user interface and theme management, administration dashboard management, shopping cart and other e-commerce related functionalities are standard functions in almost all websites. The coding need not be reinvented. They are readily available in most CMS and Software Frameworks. It should be extended and enhanced.

10. Clear cut brand communication

The ultimate purpose of the website is that it should communicate your brand’s vision and philosophy to visitors in the simplest form. The website acts as a magazine for an organization doing direct as well as indirect selling.
It should generate organic website traffic because of quality of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) done to it. It should communicate the information about products and services so that users are tempted to buy/subscribe to it , if it is an E-commerce website.

11. Customer acquisition or lead generation

The website should have clear “Call To Action” functionality in the form of buttons and contact forms for inquiry/purchase of the products or services. There should be an option to chat with the sales & marketing team round the clock and 365 days.

This is very important for customer acquisition or lead generation. Preferably all the leads should be collected and pushed to a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software.

12. Maintaining customer relationship

There should be a “Newsletter Subscription” facility so that customers can be communicated with promotional offers and discounts , if it is an E-commerce website. Even for non E-commerce websites, newsletter is the best tool to be in touch with the website visitor or customer.

There is new trend that users of the website can instantly chat on various messaging platforms with the backend personal operating it. This is a very good trend and it helps in conversion specially for e-commerce websites. It also helps in increasing trust worthiness of the website.

13. Security and protection of customer data

The website of an organization should not collect customers or visitors personal information without prior consent. Once collected, it should protect customer’s private data and it should give guarantee for it. The customers or visitors personal information should not be shared with prior consent of customers or visitors.

If a website stores cookie information, it should briefly explain the purpose of the installation of cookies. A website should have clearly drafted privacy policy and it should be clearly visible to the user. The website should also be GDPR compliant to meet the EU (European Union) requirements.

Summary

So, summarizing the above discussion following are the principles of good website design for 2021:

• Short and sweet catchy Domain name for the website
• SEO Keyword as the domain name
• Engaging content as it is said that content is king for websites
• Simple and minimalistic design with consistent layout
• Simple color scheme with good font for typography
• Attractive brand logo
• Simpler page navigation mechanism
• Use of pre-built theme and content management system
• Clear cut brand communication
• Customer acquisition or lead generation
• Maintaining customer relationship
• Security and protection of customer data

Author: Akhilesh Maurya
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