Web Design Guidelines Everyone Should Follow!

What are web design guidelines?

Should I follow them?

Are these guidelines necessary?

Web design guidelines will help you create a clear and concise outline of what you should focus on first in the design process. We’ll tell you exactly what you need to know and how you can prepare yourself for a website redesign. It can be a lot of work, but if you want your website to be an effective part of your marketing, it’s worth every effort. 

To give you an accurate estimate for your new website, we basically need to know three things:

1. How many pages will your new website have?
2. What will each of them do?
3. What do you want it to look like?

How many pages will your new website have?

Barring any special functionality, it typically requires more work to create a website with 100 pages than one that has 5 pages (thank you, Captain Obvious!). Therefore, it’s important for us to have a fairly accurate idea of the number of pages you’d like to have on your new site.

What will each of them do?

A simple website for a small business typically consists of 5-10 pages that each display a few paragraphs of text along with 1-2 images. Some websites and web pages contain special functionality, such as a product estimator, e-commerce capability, members only sections, etc.  If you want your website to do anything like that, you’ll need special programming services, so we need to know what that is and how you’d like it to work.

What do you want it to look like?

Do you have anything specific in mind for the way you want your new website to look?  A good place to start would be to find some other websites that you like. Sometimes it’s helpful for us to know what you don’t want your site to look like (i.e. “here’s a website I hate – don’t make mine look anything like that!”)

Color and mood preferences are also helpful, as well as anything else you might have in mind for your new site. 

Some people are very specific about what they’re looking for, while others only have a general idea and give us little more than a few clues our designers can use to fill in the blanks and come up with a kick-ass design.

Our Web Design Recommendations

Here are our recommendations, based on best practice and years of experience:

Remember the 80/20 rule. Focus 80% of your time on the content, and 20% on the look. Most people obsess on the look and neglect the content. Yes, you want your website to look nice, but it’s the content that’s going to drive results. Don’t make SEO an afterthought. Too many people obsess on the look of their site, and only when it’s complete do they ask, “Will my website show up in the search engines?”  If SEO is important to you (and it should be), then make SEO a priority right from the start.  If it’s important, SEO should be driving the content and design, not the other way around.

Do you have questions about your current website? Are you considering updating your web design for your Ann Arbor business? Do you want more visibility for your business?

Please email or call us if you’d like to go deeper on any of these topics.