User Interface has turned out to be one of the most important elements for web existence. The lure to stuff pages with content is giving way to a systematic way of designing and presentation that calls for a much improved experience of the users. Here are simple tips which can help you considerably augment your web UI design.
1. The Important Stands Out
Magazines are a regular part of our lives. We get to read a lot of magazines. There is one element of magazines that happens to be extremely relevant to the Web UI design. Ever imagined why the headlines are in large fonts and the images are essentially appealing? The simple answer is to attract more people. Doing the same on your page and evidently highlighting headlines, vectors, links and images can allure more people to click on the headlines and read more.
2. Manage information load effectively
Website owners have a curious lure to feed the visitors with extensive information. However, an overload of information (also known as infobesity) can confuse the reader. They can sometimes finds it difficult to gauge the purpose and exact meaning of the content and that defeats the purpose.
While you must strive to cut down on the less important content, you should also attempt to highlight important aspects of the content by using different treatments. You can mark the important points in bold, have more headings, break the content down into bullet points, colorize content and much more. This will help cut down on the information flab.
Also, when you ask your users to fill up a form; only request for information that you indispensably require.
3. Navigation
Users on your website arrive with a set goal. Everything that impedes them from achieving the objective has a bearing against your web page. Your objective has to be to make the Web UI so simple to navigate across your website that even a computer illiterate can do it with ease and in the shortest time possible.
Also, it is imperative that you let users know where they are. They might click on the wrong menu item or land up on a page, which is not the home page, through the search engines. In either case, it is important that you highlight active tabs/links or develop breadcrumb menu to ensure that the user doesn’t feel lost.
4. Consistency
When it comes to web UI design, people would appreciate consistency more than change. It is imperative to make certain that your UI works consistently. In other words, if a click on a particular tab in one of your web pages generates a certain result, clicking on the same tab on your other web pages should manage to generate precisely the same result. It is essential that the same colours are used across web pages, the same menu style is maintained and the functionalities remain constant too. Such consistency will help users be sensitized sooner and thus require lesser training and support.
5. Keep it simple
Many people always ask of what can be considered to be the best web UI design? The most convincing answer is that the best web UI designs are invisible. Only the most indispensable elements make it to the interface and are presented in an extremely terse fashion.
Before you add new element to the web UI design, be very sure that your users really require it. If you are not sure about the answer to this question, be a little more circumspect. Do not add elements just because you like them.
6. BREAK THE CLUTTER
If there are times when you have to present a large chunk of information to the users then breaking the content into smaller chunks can be really helpful.
This will firstly not scare away the readers from the information presented and secondly it will also help the readers in mentally digesting the information more effectively.
Your content should be divided into many small paragraphs under separate headers with relevant pictures. Had the same content been presented all together, there are chances that you might have stopped reading it midway. The chunking of information helps you convince the readers to go through the entire content without being worried.
