People are spending more and more time on the internet. According to last year’s Digital 2023 report by HootSuite and We Are Social, adults are on the internet each day, on average, for six hours and 42 minutes. That is a massive amount of screen time (almost 30% of our time in a year is spent online, and in a decade, over two of those years are spent surfing the web).
Your website needs to be a digital storefront AND a salesperson in one. It needs to tell a user what to do with the information you have provided, provide answers to their questions, and solve their problems. And it has to do all of this in a few clicks as possible. With the web and consumer behavior ever-evolving, there are still some very basic components to a website’s functionality that remain constant. Below we have seven must-have features for a modern website.
1. Easy navigation
This seems like a no-brainer, but many websites still get this wrong. Navigation needs to be easily understood. You want to eliminate any guesswork by the user, so they know exactly what to expect when they click. You also want to make sure they can easily scan your navigation and find what they’re looking for.
Here are some common examples of proven website menu designs:
- Standard header menu: Home, About, Contact, Shop, Services, Press, and Blog. Unless you’re making a concerted effort to brand your blog (i.e. spending a lot on marketing your blog name), users are looking for consistency.
- Hamburger menu: Three horizontal lines or dots stacked vertically and tucked away in the corner of your web page or app is a universally recognizable way to hide your expandable menu or settings when screen real estate is a premium.
- Vertical sidebar: With the increase in mobile-friendly web designs, having a fixed navigation run vertically across the side of your screen is an increasingly popular alternative to the horizontal navbar.
- Footer nav: It’s standard practice for websites to put anything that doesn’t fit elegantly at the top of your header navigation bar into the footer. Things like sitemaps, resources, and helpful links can go here.
2. Intuitive design and user experience
Similar to navigation, users want to be able to figure out what information you have on your site, but they also want to be able to access and engage with it intuitively. With Flat Design emerging as the primary design choice of the last decade, designers have since evolved to ensure they’re not sacrificing usability for aesthetics, using a more semi-flat design approach, ensuring buttons and clickable elements have just enough of a hint of what they are, subtle shadows and overlays, while still maintaining a sleek design. Users want to know what you offer and get there as quickly as possible.
3. Creative ways to display authoritative website content
What is your core marketing message? What issue(s) are you trying to solve, or what greater purpose does your product or service have? Whatever it is, make sure your content is clear and concise. Use active voice in your content, and make it short and sweet. Whether you have video, audio, or text content here’s a quick list of the most popular design elements for displaying quality content on the web:
- Unique typography is a great way to have the content on your website better reflect your brand. There are some fonts out there that are instantly recognizable, like The New Yorker, which uses Adobe Caslon Pro.
- Blogs are a proven way to connect deeper with your target audience and reach potential new customers through search engine optimization (SEO).
- Grids and galleries – If your site has a lot of photo and video content, the grid or gallery can be a great way to put that content front and center.
4. Strong, clear call to actions
With so many messages constantly being shoved in our faces, customers are looking to be told what to do, to lessen the burden on them to make another decision. Your website needs to have clear calls to action (CTA)—what is it that you want a user to do on any given page for your website? Do you want them to sign up for your newsletter, buy a product, or subscribe to a service? Try to limit the number CTAs you have on each page, again your website should reduce the burden of choice, not give too many options.
5. Immersive visual experience
Sites that tell a strong visual story and create an immersive site experience have the opportunity to increase on-site engagement, but also increase conversions. Making sure you have a stunning visual direction for your web pages will help immerse your audience from the moment they land on your website.
Common examples of things you can do to immerse your audience include:
- Large responsive hero images are a mainstay of corporate branding and web design—it’s the first thing a user sees when they land on your website, and a great opportunity to display your latest brand messaging, content, products, and services.
- Background videos display behind your web layout, and can be a slick way to differentiate your website from the competition. Use them to tell a story or convey a mood.
- High-definition, high-quality product images, with polished product photos and listings, can be arranged in a user-friendly gallery.
Additionally, sites that have a strong amount of visual content are often able to capture more organic traffic from the various content types. Also, users are more likely to share and link to your content when it’s visual, especially infographics (yes, they’re still a powerful content type), and videos.
6. Mobile-friendliness
We live in a mobile-first world. Most searches happen on your phone. 51.53% of global website traffic came from mobile devices in Q2 2020, a number that has consistently hovered around the 50% mark since 2017. Google has made many changes over the years to push webmasters to adopt this philosophy. Most recently, Google has decided that all websites will be included in their mobile index starting in Fall 2020. In other words, sites that aren’t optimized well for mobile will most likely see decreases in organic traffic.
7. Dark Mode
Dark Mode, a long-coveted feature of heavy internet users and developers, finally hit the mainstream in 2020. Facebook and a host of other apps and websites have started offering the feature, which allows you to swap color palettes from the typical white background to accommodate a black background.
Benefits of Dark Mode include:
- Higher contrast for certain colors and visuals, making it easier to focus
- Reduced eye strain (eliminate bright white screens), especially in dark rooms
- Lower energy consumption—darker screens eliminate the need for pixels to shine as brightly, conserving energy at home and increasing battery life in your pocket
Beyond the functional perks, Dark Mode is a valid aesthetic choice for certain brands and can be used to create visually stunning websites—colors and images are more vivid in dark mode, which can increase engagement.
Web design is constantly evolving
We’ve covered some of the most popular proven websites features users will covet in 2021. While many of these design elements have been around in some fashion or another for years, they’ve continued to evolve alongside web technologies and design tools to remain the mainstays of solid web design.
