Whether you like it or not, you will sooner or later come across the situations when you need to make UI design decisions. Is your bounce rate high? Do your users have a hard time navigating to the blog? It is difficult for an average user to determine what your business does within 5-10 seconds after landing on your homepage? If you are finding yourself answering “yes” to all these questions, it seems that it is time to reconsider the way you have been optimizing and designing your site.
Fortunately, there are many simple tricks you can use to level up your website without completely blowing your budget. It is not necessary to make major UI changes (unless you want to). Improving your designs is possible with a bit of tactic. The most important is to address the main concerns your audience has first and foremost. So, what do you need to improve UI design? In this posting, we have gathered some of the most practical tips to boost your UI design and make sure that you are going in the right direction in terms of UI.
What is UI Design?
User interface design (UI) is one of several crucial disciplines responsible for building the interfaces where a user interacts with a digital product. In simpler terms, it is the space where machines and users interact. We have already talked about it in one of our previous postings.
UI design is a complex issue with multiple nuances. So you cannot just take and start redesigning your site. In order to ensure that it fully meets your customers’ expectations, you first need to map out your user’s journey from the first time he or she visits your site to the moment he or she becomes a customer. Then, you should make this journey as smooth as possible. Below are the simplest ideas on how to do that.
Simple Tips for Improving UI Design
- 1. Not all buttons require a background color
Many UI designers fall into the trap of semantics. Undoubtedly, it is a crucial element of button design. However, hierarchy is even more important. The point is that most pages have several secondary actions and one primary action. When building UI design, it is important to reflect this pyramid of importance, communicating the place of each action in this pyramid.
For example:
- Lower contrast background colors work great for secondary actions. They should be clear but not prominent for users
- High contrast, solid background colors are best option for primary actions. They should be obvious for users
At the same time, keep your semantics easy:
- Make the button green if it calls for a positive action
- Make it red if it calls for a negative action (delete data)
- 2. Use colorful accent borders
Adding accent borders to elements of your UI (that look bland) is a simple yet effective trick that makes a huge difference in making your website feel more fresh and “designed.”
You can add accent borders:
- On the top of the entire layout to make it look more colorful
- Along the navigation items to highlight them
Many UI designers fall into the trap of semantics. Undoubtedly, it is a crucial element of button design.
- 3. Do not increase the icon size
If you have a large space to fill, you might start thinking of bumping up the size of your icons. At first glance, the quality is not going to suffer (it is true). However, blowing up your icons will make them look “chunky,” and not very professional. So, do not increase the size of icons that are originally meant to be tiny. Try to keep them closer to their original size.
- 4. Use fewer borders
While borders are an obvious method to build a separation between several elements, do not hurry up using them as they can make your UI design feel cluttered and busy. Instead, consider using one of the following solutions:
- Extra spacing is a great idea to distinguish two elements from one another without making serious changes to your UI
- Different background colors accomplish the same goal of outlining elements just like borders
- Using a box-shadow does the same job causing even less distraction
- 5. Do not use colored backgrounds with grey text
Keeping the text color closer to the background color can help support the abovementioned hierarchy. The following tips are helpful when working with a colorful background:
- Hand-pick colors. Adjust lightness/saturation until it looks well to you
- Decrease the opacity and use white text
- 6. Build a hierarchy instead of a size. Use font-weight and color
Avoid using font weights under 500 for UI work. They are working well for big headings but are too difficult to read at smaller sizes.
In addition, relying too much on font size is a widespread mistake when designing UI. Is this content secondary? Use a lighter color, make it smaller. Is this content primary? Make it bolder and bigger.
Try to use 2 or 3 colors. For example:
- Use grey for secondary text (publication date)
- Use dark color for important text (headlines)
If you have a large space to fill, you might start thinking of bumping up the size of your icons.
Key Takeaways
UI design is a complex issue and a dimension with a lot of impact on the success of your site. This is why it is always better to know exactly what you are doing when redesigning it. We hope that tips above will help you design a website that generates more customers, leads, and fans. At Loonar Studios, we can help you with any stage of the UI process to make your professional vision a reality. Contact us if you have any questions. Good luck!
