By now there’s hardly a small business around that doesn’t recognize the importance of having their business represented online by an attractive, professional website.

But many businesses only create a glorified digital business card. Great business websites are sophisticated marketing tools designed to help the unaware, inspire the interested and streamline your sales process.

And those websites achieve that by keeping these 3 key Principles of Web Design top of mind when designing a website.

1. Simple Navigation
   When faced with a choice (or many choices) it is human nature to choose the easiest option – or the path of least resistance. And good website navigation will make the journey as easy and fluid as possible for users.

The main navigation menu and each individual page should point people directly where they will find answers to their top of mind questions. A good website will minimize the number of choices presented at any given time, and whenever possible, give only one choice. Oftentimes this one choice is to either “click the button” or “not click the button” and keep on scrolling.

2. Visual Hierarchy
   Visual Hierarchy further assists the user by ordering elements by importance and using visual cues to draw the eye to a specific message or action. Color and Spacing plays a large role, along with your text style, imagery, and call-to-action verbiage.

When done correctly, you can present a large amount of information in a way that is easily digested and memorable.

3. Mobile Responsiveness
   Regardless of what industry you’re in, your website needs to be designed with mobile devices (meaning smartphones and tablets) in mind because around 50% of all internet searches are conducted on these pint sized computers.

In addition to it being responsive to device size, it still needs to load quickly. So keeping your site’s performance in mind should also be important when addressing responsiveness.