The Key Factors for a Successful User Interface Design

Website design is a creative field where you learn every day as you gather more experience. Designing a wonderful layout and perfectly usable user interface is not an easy task. You have to concentrate and balance several elements of web design to achieve the perfect result. User interface can make or break a website's success. Here I will discuss the important elements of user interface design and how you should approach it.

Question yourself- All of us use various websites and follow a pattern to achieve our objectives in those websites. But for a successful user interface design, you need to realize the usability of a user interface from a user's perspective and question yourself how you can help the user to fulfill his goals. If you do some research, you will find that all the user interfaces are not same in all the websites. They all have a different pattern to offer better usability to their target audience. The main reason behind different UI is; different websites have different purposes. While a social media site wants their visitors to sign up, an ecommerce website wants their users to buy a product from them. For successful user interface design, ask yourself some questions such as, what the users want to do when they land on the website? How my design can help them to do it effortlessly? What are the most vital elements of the page and did I miss something? How can I help the users to complete their task faster? You can also check your competitor websites to realize what they have done in their website to make them so lovable. It's not about how beautiful a website design looks, but how helpful it is for the users.

Place the buttons/links properly- If a visitor comes to a website and the main menu confuses him, he won't bother to decipher it. The page elements such as menu bar, sidebar, social network links etc. all needed to be placed harmoniously for better usability. You need to design the menu depending upon the website's offerings. While web designers use horizontal menu in most UI, vertical menu can be useful as well. For instance, if you are designing an email website, the vertical menu is much more useful than horizontal menu. The page elements should remain the same in all pages. If the homepage has the "contact us" at the right side of the menu bar and the about us page shows the "contact us" tab at the left side of the menu bar, it will disturb the page balance.

Evaluate the user interface by a user- Every website has its own purpose and your aim is to fulfill their objectives. Ask your friend to access the site and use it. Tell him to note down what things helped him to do the task and what components he feels are complicated. For example, if it's an ecommerce website and he does not find the products page instantly, your UI is not perfect. Ask him what he thinks about the "payment" process and how easy or difficult he thinks it is. The less clicks needed for doing the job, the better your UI is. You should also concentrate on the fonts, colors etc. If the fonts are too light or the color is too bright it can hinder the usability. Make sure the headings are bold enough so that the users can spot them easily. Unless you create a perfect balance of all the design elements, the website functionality won't be 100%.

Conclusion- Once you are done with everything and make the website live, ask for user feedback. A range of users may suggest you some great tips that will make the UI even more useful. Also, never think that because your site has become successful your work is done. You have to keep an eye on the changing trends and have to come up with new ideas to make your website interface even more useful. Regular updates will not only improve the UI but satisfy the clients and increase fresh traffic as well.