Best UI Practices in Website Designing

The best way to understand UI in website designing is to know how different the concept is from UX.

UI is the visual elements that you see and use for interaction. In terms of a website, it can be but not limited to dropdown lists, text fields, search field, icons, and notifications.

UX is the underlying feeling people get when they use a product. Again if I have to explain by keeping a website as the reference then it is about the experience that a user will have while interacting with the website.

UI & UX are the most confused and interchanged words. It’s crucial to know the difference. Because, whether it’s an application or a website, UI & UX should work in harmony to say that the user had a great experience using your product or service.

As a professional website designer, you should never fail to understand how UI plays into UX.

Website Design: Best UI Practices to be followed

• Be Familiar with your Audience
  • The concept of knowing your audience is critical. What your audience needs and how will your website can help them in meeting their needs?
  • Suppose you were developing tinder app, your audience would have been definitely the young generation looking for like-minded partners. You would design the app or website that would easily address their requirement. Let’ say for instance in this app, all people have to do is perform simple swipe mechanism to mark their interests. The buttons at the bottom of a screen allow them to express their interests about the profile.
  • It’s a simple logic. Understand your audience, design the layout as per their preference, use colors, which they would find striking, take feedbacks, so they will find it easier to interact with your website in the future. You can also actually spy on your competitor’s website; it would give a better start rather than you starting with a completely blank sheet.
• Maintain Design Consistency
  • When your customers are not lost navigating through your website that means you been successful in not creating a maze, which is actually an achievement.
  • Design consistency = Crucial ≠ Boring Website
  • So, what does consistent website design exactly mean?
  • It means using the common user interface elements at the same place throughout the website. Site navigation, company logo, and page content etc are some of the common user interface elements.
  • Suppose if the website visitors find your company logo at the right end corner, they should consistently find it at the same place on every web page of that website. In simple words, you have defined consistency and people have found it easier to find the same element across each web page that means they have enjoyed their experience with your website.
• Implement Visual Hierarchy
  • Website designing is an art. Whether you do in terms of UI or UX, it requires imagination and understanding to how you can make it convenient for the users to access your website.
  • Suppose you are a portrait artist, what will be the basic aspect in your portrait? It’s simple, but try to answer, if you want to understand the concept of visual hierarchy in website designing.
  • Your website is a portrait, now will it be good if I say you can compare the facial features to the UI elements?
  • The goal of visual hierarchy is,
  • A website visitor should be able to recognize a feature (its usefulness), how it can be used (usability), and how you will benefit from that (desirability).
  • In case of a website, it is the organization of website content so the human eye would find it a lot easier to go with the flow.
  • Actually, the website designs are read according to two hierarchical patterns,
  • – The Z Pattern
  • – The F Pattern
  • We will learn about these patterns sometime later. But visual hierarchy can work wonders if done right.
• Understand the Psychology of Colors
  • The most neglected design aspect is the use of colors. Web designers work towards producing designs that have a greater effect on user experience when a person interacts with a website. So, the color aspect never gets that respect that should have been given.
  • Colors play with the emotion. Men like bold colors, women like soft shades, mix it, you may find the audience skipping over your website. The colors chosen for a website should be soothing for the eyes and color coordination establishes a relation between interface elements, which actually makes it a part of the visual hierarchy.
• Have Simple Contact Forms
  • Keep the contact simple and relevant. Don’t add irrelevant fields that would scare away the prospective customers, or overwhelm them when they find the form too long to fill.
  • People barely have time, so it’s hardly by chance they may be ready to give in those few moments filling the form unless they don’t feel it’s necessary or even worth to do that. Since it’s a kind of interface element, you have to keep it as applicable as possible. If you have seen the signup form of Facebook or Twitter, you are hardly asked any information apart from your name, email address, and password.
  • Apart from these, you should remind yourself to keep the font size big enough, so the visitors don’t find it difficult to read the fields.
• Collaborate with the Team
  • Teamwork matters.
  • If UX and UI teams are disconnected, the product or website will not be successful.
  • But when both UX and UI complement each other, the application or website will have an incredible effect on the user experience.