Make every visitor’s interaction with your digital products convenient and rewarding. Encourage them to come back and become actual customers with carefully thought-out design elements. Here are some tips for designing a user-centric app or website.

1. Define the style

The style is the most important part of the design. What is the impression that you want to bring to the user? Generally, designers need to consider the property of the product, which industry does the app or website fall under? If it’s music, for instance, then the designer can find and apply music related elements.

2. Define the size

Size of the page is very important. 

Follow the app system and website system development guidelines. Make it clear which app template, screen size, and resolution you will use.

Define the font size in one module or template, then reuse it in the following pages. Also, don’t use more than 3 types of fonts, and many sizes.

Additionally, remember to create a template first before designing other pages. Starting off with a template makes for a much efficient and universal approach for designing an app or website.

3. Copyright of font and image

Use free copyright font and image or, if possible, original images.

The font is defined at the early stage of the design because different types of fonts have different height at the same size. If you change the font type, you may also need to update all the size, which will require more efforts from designers and developers.

If you choose to use a copyrighted font, decide which type if most suitable for your product. 

4. Module design

Pay attention to alignment, contrast, and hierarchy, and leave space to breathe. Create modules, but as fewer kinds as possible.

5. Reusable

Elements like buttons and symbols can be reusable and can be updated synchronously together. This will save efforts because one app or web includes many pages.

6. Keep consistent

Keep the design of the same features across-platforms, consistent.

7. Shortest user journey, simplest route, most optimised steps

For one feature, the fewer actions for users, the better.  So find mature products as references, to guide you to the simplest route.

8. Extremal number allowed for texts

The designer needs to consider the longest and shortest number of texts allowed users to input, like username, password, title, comment, etc. Remember to leave enough character limit.

9. Error prompt design user-friendly

When a user enters the wrong contents, an error prompt should appear in real-time to inform the user why it is wrong. Then, they can make necessary changes to correct their entries. 

10. Make web responsive

Use the grid web design approach to make the website responsive, and so the web pages can render well on a variety of devices and window or screen sizes. Content, design, and performance are completely shown, and are not hidden across all devices to ensure usability and satisfaction.

Finally, double check all pages and details. Ensure the 10 tips listed above are applied in your design.