Website Design – Attraction, Usability & Accessibility

Every aspect of the sites we create at Net Age has been carefully considered, and deeply thought-out. We do everything for a reason, with set goals in mind, and using the methods and tools we’ve learned through experience will help achieve these goals.

The foundation of a website design is based on these 3 principles.
* Attraction
* Usability
* Accessibility

Web Attraction

Before delving into the benefits of an attractive site lets get one thing straight from the start, the content of a website is more important than how pretty the site is! The appearance of a site is merely a showcase, the content should always be the main attraction.

Having said that though, the value of the content is often, at first glance, measured by the appeal of its packaging. Effective imagery and striking colours, accompanied by a bold and catchy slogan can catch attention. Hooking visitors in this way, an attractive site can make sure they stick around long enough to actually check out the content, bringing them a step closer to making that all-important first contact.

Website Usability

If a visitor can’t easily use and navigate your site, you’ll find they won’t care how fantastic your content might be. They’ll give up in frustrated resignation and click their way out, looking for an easier way to find what they need somewhere else.

Navigation must be easy to use and clearly direct the visitors to relevant content, which in turn should be easily understood, imparting information in clear concise language. Get to the point without messing about!

Accessibility

As much as the online world is largely a visually-oriented one, our website designs must still take into account the needs of visitors with disabilities. Blind visitors, for example, will make use of a screen reader (a program that literally reads the information on the screen out loud for the user) and a website must be constructed in such a way as to be as accessible as possible for such visitors. Logical and easily understandable language and layout is vital.

The Why of Website Design

The colours, fonts, empty spaces and the content are all chosen to access not only the conscious thoughts of the visitor but also the subconscious. Colour use and images are the most effective ways to influence action without the user even being aware that we are trying to influence them.

While many people are fond of the idea of having a website that is full of action, a busy website overloading the senses with visual stimuli is not our preferred design route. A more reserved layout is more likely to appeal to a visitor, giving them the sense of being given information in an orderly, attractive fashion, rather than being crudely assaulted with it. Too much activity will distract from the information you want to convey.

A professional and minimalistic approach is the direction we opt for. Roughly two colours and two fonts, used throughout if possible, generate a feeling of conflict-free uniformity, providing the visitor with a pleasant experience.

We Design Web Sites For You

We offer a dedicated professional service at Net Age, we have refined our skills for more than a decade and, while it may not always seem that way, we know how to give our clients what they want, namely, more business.

I hope that this short article has served to outline the point that while everyone these days seems to know a web-designer, we offer a level of specialization far above the average. We design websites that work and we have been doing so for a very long time. We have found that the best results are most often achieved when our clients let us get on with what we know with the minimal possible interference.

Our clients pay us to do our job with their best business interests at heart and we’d like to reassure them that that is exactly what we do. Anything less would be unethical.