Web Design: The Balance Between Form & Function | Insights | K2l

Web Design: The Balance Between Form & Function.

To achieve a great website, the balance between form and function needs to be executed perfectly. Too much focus on one or the other will result in a web design that isn’t as effective as you were hoping for. If you take a look at any successful site, you’ll notice that it’s both aesthetically pleasing, and easy to navigate, thereby enabling you to fine the information you’re looking for.

Form
Obviously a website needs a well-executed visual style. You can make a website look as fantastic as you like, with great imagery, large videos and parallax scrolling—but you need to keep the main purpose of the website in mind: it’s there to spread awareness, or to sell products and services.

A visually impressive website will gain the user’s attention, but if they can’t
find or access the information they’re looking for, you’ll lose their attention just as quickly.

Function
With this in mind, the navigation of your site needs to be well thought out, easy to use and clear. You could come up with the most functional site ever created, but if it looks bland, boring, or even ugly, the user will never find out how great it works as they won’t hang around long enough to see.

The Balance
There are so many websites out there and your site will have a lot of competition. You need to catch the user’s eye and the form of a website is what will draw the user to it. However, it’s the functionality of the website that will get your visitors to stay. If you get the balance of the two right, you’ll achieve a site that will result in a satisfying user experience and encourage repeat visits from users.

The temptation to put more focus on the way a site looks will always be there, and it is obviously important, but just remember the key purpose of the website; and think about what the user will want to find when they land on the page. and how they would expect to navigate around the site. If you design with both of these elements in mind, you’ll be well on your way to designing a great site.

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