The success and failure of your business can be determined by simple things, one of them is website layout. How your website is designed and what fonts, colours and images you choose unconsciously play a very crucial role in your business. Design speaks louder than words. Thus, how your website looks like says a lot about your company or business. So, make sure you leave good impressions to your visitors when they visit your website. Here we provide you with some tips on how to create awesome website layouts:

1.THOUGHTS ON PAPER

Before you start designing, choosing fonts, or anything else, what you need to do first is putting your thoughts on paper. The first step may seem too obvious, but believe us, there are a lot of designers out there who jump straight into Photoshop without having solutions to the problems they have. You will have good designs through organized thoughts and clear hierarchy, not images, gradients or shadows. So, think about the content, layout and functionality that will be your solutions.

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2.THINK ABOUT FRAMEWORK

After putting your thoughts on the design that you want to create, you can move on to the next step, which is thinking about the framework. Put your thoughts into the supporting surrounding of the contents, such as navigation, sidebars and bottom bars. If you have thought about them at the earliest stage, you will have a clear understanding about your layout needs when you have finished designing the homepage.

The primary navigation is normally deployed in a horizontal menu at the top of your website. You can also provide a secondary navigation, called the sidebar, underneath the primary navigation or in the margin of your website. When creating navigation options, make sure they are logical. Logical ? what does it mean? It means that the visitors of your website can navigate through your webpages easily and conveniently. Do not forget to leave a trail for your visitors by including clues to guide them where they should go next.

Make your navigation options as practical and clear as possible for your viewers to get the necessary and important information, because people will end up quitting your page instead of carrying on to find what they are looking for when they see confusing navigation layouts.

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3.ADD GRID TO PSD

Before you start choosing themes, colours and fonts for your pages, dont forget to add a grid to your PSD. Your design will not look as good if you start designing without a grid. Having a grid is essential because it will assist you in structuring the layout of different sections. You will find a grid useful when you are about to create responsive templates and want to stay consistent with regards to spacing and other design issues.

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4.EASY-TO-READ FONTS

After the three points above are well taken care of, you can start choosing the fonts you want to use for your pages. Exploring different typefaces is an important stage in doing a design project. Normally, using two different typefaces for a website is enough. But considering the nature of the project itself, you can use more or less. What matters most when choosing typography, including the fancy one, is that the font you will choose will have to be easy to read across browsers and devices when your visitors have to read a long amount of texts.

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Talking about texts, when you have to incorporate paragraphs, try to avoid long paragraphs. Instead, chop them into shorter paragraphs, as there is a tendency that people will lose their attention span when they read a long and monotonous text.

Moreover, you have to remember to give some space for your visitors to breathe. Put spaces between images and paragraphs. This way, your visitors will be able to absorb everything they read and see without having a headache.

5.CHOOSING COLOURS

Moving on from fonts and texts, if you want to create an awesome website layout, you need to also pay a special attention to colours. Depending on the purpose that you want to achieve, you are free to choose whether you will use colours that blend well or do not blend well together. For instance, if you want an eye-catching website, then use bold and vivid colours. But if you want your website to look clean, modern and elegant, then go for a mostly neutral colour palette. For general interface, however, it is better to use a limited set of colours and tones. But whichever colours you choose, try to stay consistent about using the same colours throughout all pages. It is also worth bearing in mind that you use a colour palette that complements your logo and is consistent with the other marketing tools that you use.?You can choose a more playful colour for the title to attract attention.

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6.CONSISTENT THEME

What is more, keeping your theme consistent is also important. It is best to apply a single unified theme throughout instead of applying multiple themes for one site, as multiple themes will do nothing but confusing your visitors. Consistent theme also indicates a clean and professional look.

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7.DIVIDE THE LAYOUT

Another important tip to remember when designing a website layout is that you have to divide the layout. Imagine yourself visiting a website and clicking a section on that website. Of course you want that section to be informative. Each section on a website should tell a story to its viewers. Each section has to be useful and provide a final outcome.

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8.SCREEN RESOLUTION

Last but not least, dont forget about screen resolution. A great professional website has to be able to fit any screen resolution and completely responsive. When it fits on every device, it is much better as people can visit your website anywhere and anytime.

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