Website Design

What Makes a Good Website? 9 Design Practices That Matter IL Webdesign | August 30, 2026 | 11 min read WEBSITE DESIGN Table of Contents 1. Start With a Clear Purpose for Every Page 2. Build a Homepage That Guides Visitors 3. Keep Website Navigation Simple 4. Make Important Actions Easy to Recognize 5. Keep Contact Forms Easy to Complete 6. Design With Mobile Visitors in Mind 7. Make Accessibility Part of the Design 8. Improve Page Speed and Visual Stability 9. Use Visual Hierarchy to Guide Attention 10. Frequently Asked Questions 11. Key Takeaways 12. Build a Better Experience for Your Visitors 13. Disclaimer 14. References What makes a website genuinely good? It is easy to focus on colors, images, animations, and other visual details, but appearance is only part of the experience. Following website design best practices means thinking about how easily your visitors can understand your content, move between pages, complete forms, and find what they need. A polished site can still frustrate people if the navigation is confusing or important information is difficult to find. Even smaller details matter. For example, common website contact form mistakes can create unnecessary friction when someone is ready to reach out. The same is true when a page loads slowly or does not work comfortably on a phone. In this guide, you will learn nine practical design principles that can help you create a clearer, faster, more accessible, and easier-to-use website. 1. Start With a Clear Purpose for Every Page Before choosing images, rearranging sections, or changing button styles, ask yourself one question: what should someone accomplish on this page? Every important page needs a clear purpose. Your homepage may introduce your business and direct visitors toward your main services. A service page should explain a specific offering. A portfolio may help potential customers evaluate your previous work. Problems often start when one page tries to do too many things at once. Imagine visiting a homepage with several banners, competing headlines, multiple promotions, long paragraphs, pop-ups, and five equally prominent buttons. The information might all be relevant, but figuring out where to start becomes difficult. An effective website design creates priorities. Think about what visitors need first and organize the page around that need. Supporting information can come afterward. You can test this yourself. Open one of your important pages and look at it for a few seconds. If you cannot immediately explain its purpose or identify the most important information, a new visitor may struggle too. A useful page does not need to say everything at once. It needs to make the important things clear. 2. Build a Homepage That Guides Visitors Your homepage is often where visitors begin forming an impression of your business. A useful homepage layout should quickly help someone understand what your business does, whether it is relevant to them, and where they should go next. This does not mean squeezing every important message into the first screen. Instead, think about your homepage as a guided sequence. Your opening section can establish what the business offers. The next sections can introduce important services, explain relevant benefits, answer common questions, or provide other information that helps visitors decide where to go. The order matters. For example, placing detailed company history before explaining what the business actually does may force a new visitor to search for basic information. That history could still be valuable, but it may belong farther down the page. A strong website user experience usually feels natural because the visitor does not have to think very hard about what comes next. You can evaluate your homepage by pretending you know nothing about the business. Ask yourself whether the first few sections provide enough context to understand the company and continue exploring confidently. 3. Keep Website Navigation Simple Navigation is one of those design elements people often notice only when it does not work well. Visitors usually arrive with a goal. They may want to see your services, understand your company, review examples of your work, read helpful information, or find another specific page. Your navigation should make those destinations easy to recognize. Clear labels are usually more useful than clever ones. Visitors already understand familiar terms such as Services, About, Portfolio, and Blog. Replacing them with unusual wording can make the menu feel more distinctive, but it can also force people to interpret what each label means. The number of choices matters too. If your main navigation contains a large collection of equally important links, visitors may have difficulty deciding where to start. Grouping related pages into logical categories can make a larger website easier to explore. Your website navigation should also work comfortably on smaller screens. A desktop menu that looks organized across a wide header may become crowded or difficult to use when compressed into a mobile menu. The best test is simple: choose a page and see how quickly you can find it without using search or relying on your knowledge of the site. 4. Make Important Actions Easy to Recognize Buttons tell visitors what they can do next. That could mean viewing a service, continuing to another page, submitting information, downloading a resource, or completing another useful action. The wording should make that action understandable. Design matters too. Call-to-action buttons need enough visual distinction to be recognizable without making every section feel like it is demanding attention. Consistency can help. If your primary buttons use one general visual treatment throughout the website, visitors can learn what those elements represent. If every page uses completely different button shapes, sizes, and styles, the interface becomes less predictable. Placement should follow context rather than a fixed formula. Someone who already understands what they want may appreciate a clear next step near the beginning of a page. Another visitor may need to read more information before the same action makes sense. This is why simply adding more buttons does not necessarily improve a page. Too many competing actions can create the opposite problem.

7 Contact Form Mistakes That Could Be Costing You Leads IL Webdesign | August 5, 2026 | 10 min read WEBSITE DESIGN Table of Contents 1. Asking for Too Much Information 2. Using Labels That Leave People Guessing 3. Making the Form Difficult to Use on Mobile 4. Using a Vague or Confusing Submit Button 5. Handling Errors Poorly 6. Overlooking Accessibility 7. Failing to Test the Complete Form Experience 8. Frequently Asked Questions 9. Key Takeaways 10. Make It Easier for Visitors to Take the Next Step 11. Disclaimer 12. References A website contact form may look like a small part of your site, but it can play an important role in turning an interested visitor into an inquiry. If the form feels confusing, asks for unnecessary information, or does not work properly on a phone, people may hesitate before finishing it. The challenge is that many form problems are easy to miss when you already know how your own website works. You know what each field means and what happens after submission. A first-time visitor does not. Looking at how thoughtful design choices improve the visitor experience can help you understand the bigger picture. In this guide, we will focus specifically on seven form mistakes that can create unnecessary friction and what you can do instead. 1. Asking for Too Much Information Every additional field gives your visitor another decision to make. That does not mean every form needs to contain only a name and email address. Some businesses genuinely need more information to understand an inquiry. The problem starts when a form asks for details simply because they might be useful later. Think about the purpose of the form. If someone is making an initial inquiry, do you really need their full mailing address, company size, budget, preferred meeting time, referral source, and several paragraphs of project details before you can respond? Maybe you do need some of those details. Maybe you do not. Good contact form design starts by separating information you need now from information you can collect later. For example, imagine someone is interested in discussing a project but has not decided on every detail. A form that requires an exact budget and launch date could make that person feel as though they are not ready to inquire. The W3C Web Accessibility Initiative recommends keeping forms simple and short and asking users only for information required to complete the relevant process. It also notes that irrelevant or excessive requests can make abandonment more likely. Review every field and ask yourself, “What will I do with this information immediately after receiving the form?” If you do not have a clear answer, consider whether that field needs to be there. The goal is not to make every form as short as possible. The goal is to make every field earn its place. 2. Using Labels That Leave People Guessing How Clear Labels Improve Your Website Contact Form A visitor should not have to interpret what you want them to enter. Labels such as “Information,” “Details,” or “Subject” may make sense internally, but they can mean different things to different people. Clear wording reduces that uncertainty. If you need a phone number, label the field “Phone Number.” If you want someone to describe what they need, wording such as “How can we help?” may provide more context than simply saying “Message.” Placeholder text can be useful for examples, but it should not have to do all the work of identifying a field. This becomes especially important when someone starts typing and the placeholder disappears. If there is no persistent label, the visitor may lose the context they need to review their information. The W3C Web Accessibility Initiative recommends identifying form controls with appropriate labels and providing instructions when users need additional information to complete a form. Its guidance also covers grouping related controls, validating input, and notifying users about errors. Clear labels are therefore not just a visual preference. They are part of creating understandable forms. Look at your own form without relying on your knowledge of the business. Can you immediately tell what belongs in every field? If not, your visitors may be wondering the same thing. 3. Making the Form Difficult to Use on Mobile A form that works on a laptop can feel completely different on a phone. Small screens give visitors less room to work with. They also interact by tapping rather than clicking with a mouse. That changes how you should think about fields, buttons, spacing, and the overall website form design. For example, imagine a form with several fields squeezed into two or three columns. The layout might look organized on a large monitor. On a phone, those same fields may become narrow, stack in an awkward order, or require more effort to complete. Small tap targets can create another problem. Checkboxes, dropdown controls, and buttons need to be practical to interact with using a finger. You should also consider the type of information being requested. A phone-number field, email field, and regular text field may benefit from different input behaviors on mobile devices. Google web.dev provides guidance on creating user-friendly forms and covers areas including accessibility, form controls, validation, autofill, security and privacy, and testing forms across devices. The best way to evaluate mobile contact form usability is to complete the form yourself. Do not just open the page and check whether everything fits. Type into every field. Open each dropdown. Trigger an error. Correct it. Submit the form. That gives you a much more realistic picture of what your visitors experience. 4. Using a Vague or Confusing Submit Button A submit button may contain only a few words, but those words help set expectations. “Submit” is technically accurate, but it does not always tell someone what happens next. The right wording depends on the purpose of your form. A button could tell visitors they are sending an inquiry, submitting a question, requesting information, or taking another clearly defined