What are best practices in website design?

Hello and welcome to another episode of Websites Made Simple. I am Holly Christie. I’m website designer, a mentor for website designers, and I am here to help you absolutely fall in love with your website design business. 

As a website designer with a lot of experience, I know that that statement seems like quite a sweeping one. There are times where we absolutely really loathe our business, and it often comes from a lack of confidence, and that lack of confidence in turn comes because we’re struggling with something.  In website design, and I know from back in the days when I would think, oh gosh, I really, really, I’m, I’m not feeling this, I’m not getting it.

I am not enjoying it. That it was often because at the time I was not necessarily.  Working to best practices, and one of the things that I really learned along the way was the higher my standards, the better the practices were, then the more I fell in love with my business, and I am here to teach that to you so that you can not only love your business, you can feel confident in it as well, and your clients will have absolute utmost confidence in you.

So ready to get started.  The absolute first place that I feel best practice needs to come into website design is with accessibility. And if you’ve been a designer for a while or if you’re quite new to website design, you might feel like, oh, I’ll just, you know, get the design looking really nice. And that’s enough. 

We’ve all been there. I remember back in the early days, I never even thought to check a website on a mobile, let alone kind of format it for mobile. But accessibility really means that it, the website is accessible for everybody who wants to use it, and they might be vision impaired, or they may have.

Real issues with their fine motor control, or they may be using a screen reader to access the website. And as the website designer, it is your job to make sure that this website gives the information, looks great, and absolutely is inclusive for everybody who wants to be able to use the website and the first place the most.

Simple place is to be able to start with your fonts, is to have your body fonts at a minimum of 16 points. Don’t be afraid to, you know, go up to 18 points there, make sure that it’s really, really legible. Also, make sure that you have some good line spacing and line heights on your fonts so that. It’s easy for people, you know, it’s not all bunched up.

It’s easy for people to read. There’s space, remember all ways. The more space we put around something.  The easier it is to read that thing. And when we look at the heading fonts, if you want to use a font that’s a handwriting font or a script font, you know? Absolutely. That’s great. I mean, we do ask that they’re legible and you might want to look at the kerning of a font that you have a couple of pixels spacing, or you set the EM status next to it so that it’s just stretched out, so it makes it easier to read.

But what’s quite important as well, is that you use a. Backup font, which is not a crif or handwriting font, so that if someone is, has their browser set, that their browser doesn’t kind of pick up handwriting fonts or something like that because they find them too hard to read that they can, their browser can switch it to the backup font, which would be, you know, like your real standard Montserrat, your aerial.

Something like that. Something that makes it really, really easy to read. And don’t worry about how this is going to affect the design, because if someone is partially cited, they are, or they’re using a screen reader, they are going to be more, um, interested in getting the information from the website than to say, oh, this would look better if it had us.

Scripted fonts on there as well. And just while we’re talking about fonts as well, having fonts left aligned makes it easier for dyslexics to read. And it’s quite important because a large percentage of the population are dyslexic. It’s quite important that we do follow that. So there are times we’ll have.

Small bodies of text in centered position. But if you’re going for those long bodies of text, you’re looking to have it left aligned as well. And you can always go on the dyslexia. Um, I go on the dyslexia UK website because I’m a UK website designer, but whatever country you are in, um,  follow the guidelines there as well.

So that is a really quick win with your fonts and you should be bringing it into.  Every design to make sure that A, your designs are uniform. Because one of the things that the search engines look for when they’re recommending websites is they’re looking for a design to be uniform. They’re looking for it to be predictable.

And as a designer, as you start to kind of cut your teeth around this sort of thing, you will. Automatically start to have that uniformity within your website, and that’s going to build confidence and trust in your audience and the people who are looking to work with you as well, because they’re going to look through your portfolio, they’re going to look at different websites, and they can see the kind of principles that you’re working towards.

And trust me, this does all come into best practice is having very predictable experiences.  So another part of best practice is SEO structure within the website. And at the moment, as I record this in 2025, there is a lot of talk and murmurings about is SEO dead, that the search engines are prioritizing the really big websites like the um, Reddit.

Lots of people are seeing like Reddit. Threads from 2015 come up top of the search results, LinkedIn posts, things like that. And yeah, you know, that’s a search engine’s prerogative to display what they think is going to be the best. They are using the ERP ratings to say, you know, what’s the most reliable websites?

We’ll show those first  and.  Really as your job, and if you’re listening to this podcast, the chances are you are building websites for small and medium sized businesses. So your job is to absolutely disregard the, oh, Reddit’s always going to come above this website anyway, kind narrative, and keep building the best websites that you can can, and the best websites that you can are going to have a very good SEO structure.

So you need to start with your site map. You know, be honest. I like to use a plugin to do that because I know that it’s going to do all of the work for me in terms of submitting the site map to something like a Google My Business account, and it’s not gonna drop the ball on anything. So my first thing to do is look at using an SEO plugin.

I often use the Yost SEO plugin because it’s. Simple. It’s simple to hand over to clients and it does a really good job as well. So that is a good starting place. Then you want to look at your heading structure. You want to make sure that your page content is broken down into sections. Each is. Each section will have a heading two at the beginning of it.

And then if you want to pull out subsections within that, you would use your heading three. So for example, I may have a subsection on my website that says, you know, what’s the best word and press plugins for this. And that section is the title be heading two. And then if I did a pros and cons list, the pros and cons headings would be heading three because it’s.

The hierarchy within the setting. And remember with Heading one, you only ever use it once in the page. It’s used at the top of the page. It’s used to describe the page. So we often use heading ones at in page title bars and things like that. But having even the most basic SEO structure on your website is going to help you work towards best practice and ease and keywords again.

Having a plugin like Yoast will prompt you, what’s the key phrase for the page or the keywords for the page, and then it’s going to help the search engines to index that as well. Because one of the things we know is that SEO is always changing, but if you follow the basic principles of SEA, like having proper structured content, having keywords within your pages, having images that are the correct.

Size of the page having, um, alt descriptions on your images as well, so that screen readers can read out those. Then you know that ultimately your SEO score on page speeds should be looking at between 90 and a hundred. And ultimately, no matter what happens with the different SEO. Criteria is, and algorithms as they change your websites will still have a really good chance of ranking and ranking over the long-term basis.

So do not skip this step.  So the next thing with. The websites, I would say is using the best and the premium tools for your website builds. It is not enough to think I’ll just build it out in divvy because I can buy a lifetime license for $249 and I can just whack out as many websites as I like with that divvy.

ISS a good bit of kit and you know, there are times that I have built websites in Divvy and there are times that I recommend it, but it is not. The only bit of Kit lots and lots of website developers use Elemental. And the reason that they use Elemental in many cases is because it,  I want to say that Elemental is idiot proof because anyone can use it.

It is the real drag and drop, um, software often. Within it, you can change the global settings for the website within the page, but most importantly, when Elemental first, um, launched, they offered a lifetime deal on the licensing. So  people can build as many websites as they like with it. And you know, the more websites they build, the lower the cost of the license becomes.

They also do bundled an agency and pricing as well.  Would I recommend Elementor for a website design? Absolutely not. I think that it is not idiot proof, and that when you hand it over to clients, they often find it quite a intimidating experience. Elementor has many, many, many, many, many updates, often updating every couple of days, which makes it slightly unstable, particularly because.

People like to layer a lot of plugins with Elementor as well. So it then means that every time there’s a tech update, there’s potential that the website would break. And it does happen regularly if you go on any elemental forums and stuff like that. So really look at what. Tech stack you are using, and don’t worry about the price of it because if you’re pricing your websites properly, the cost will be either handed over to the client or included within the build.

Um, I use, uh, website software of ada. It is about $84 per license per website, and I have always accounted for that within the build. The good thing about the software that I’m using is there are so many outta the box features within it. I don’t need lots of other plugins to run the website, so.  There’s that kind of ebb and flow that I know that the tech stack is very, very stable.

I also know there aren’t lots of other premium, um, prices that, uh, people are going to have to pay for their websites on an ongoing basis as well. So to make sure that you are using the absolute best tools and if you are not sure what the best tools are, have a look. There are lots of website. Groups around on forums, on places like Facebook and LinkedIn.

Find a mentor. There are people that you can ask the opinion of as well, but don’t just go kind of. Building on the cheapest structures because often the cheapest structures aren’t the best and they won’t do what you’re looking for them to do as well.  The next thing I would talk about is having lightweight websites because the lighter weight, the website.

Is the better it is going to perform A on search engines, but B, just with the audience. And it’s really important that it performs well on both desktop and on mobiles, particularly because with mobiles and with some tablets, people are downloading it over 4G and 5G connections. In some cases, even 3G connections.

So you really do have to work to make this one a good one here. And the first thing is to make sure that your website is completely mobile responsive. Do not leave it just up to the theme where it just breaks down the website into.  You know, into columns. It stacks the columns, one on top of the other, and off you go.

Really do build in the time, like with each website, uh, project. I do build in a couple of hours at the end of the build to make sure that the mobile responsive is absolutely there. I want my website to look as great on mobile as they do on desk. Top as well, and there are some things we’ll also look at doing.

So the, it saves people when they’re looking at it over their data. For example, I might hide header images and videos on a mobile if they’re there just purely for aesthetics rather than informational, so that the phone, the internet connection is not trying to download those extra files as well. And I may look at changing the font sizes on mobiles as well to make them easier to read or line spacing. 

There’s lots of different ways that you can do it to make sure that they’re mobile responsive, but it’s really, really important that you do that as well.  So the next thing I would say is really important with best practices is having great boundaries. And I talk on this podcast about boundaries a lot, and they are really, really important.

They are what will keep you feeling sane in the whole process, but also it will be the difference between clients feeling like they’ve had a really good experience and clients feeling that it’s not been so great. The websites are right, but. They wouldn’t really recommend it, and it’s, it’s a really interesting one because. 

People obviously want access to you. Whenever they feel like it as the web designer, they think, oh, I’ve just had an idea. Can you do this? Or Can you do that? Or whatever, and that’s great, but they can’t just tip tap away at you all of the time because first of all, you might be doing your marketing or you might be designing another website.

I always have two or three websites on the go at any one times. So I can’t just keep dropping things to fill in something on another one. Um, but also it doesn’t make it a good experience for the client because if the client is tip topping away at you and they’re drip feeding content and they’re invariably slowing down the project because of doing so, they’re also getting to the point that they are never off duty from this website build. 

And actually one of the reasons of using a developer is that you start off the process with a, you know, let’s get an understanding of what it is you’re looking for, what I’m gonna provide you do all the timescales or that sort of thing. And then once you’ve got all of the content, they should feel like they can sit back and just wait for their updates and do update them regularly.

I talk about that in a moment. Um, but they shouldn’t feel like the whole time that they are micromanaging this task. And micromanaging does not make. Anybody happy. It will not make you happy. It will not make your client happy either. So hold really good boundaries and within those boundaries to let the clients know when they can hear from you.

But even if they’re kind of tip tapping away with, you know, oh, I’ve just had thought about this, or, I’ve just had a thoughts about that, that’s great. Bundle it all together and reply to them once a day or once a week or whatever it is that your terms. Say, um, for this reason, I always advise that people don’t use things like WhatsApp or Messenger or, you know, LinkedIn messaging or whatever around their websites.

I like to keep it to email communication. You might be running something like clickup or a system where they can drop comments in there, whatever works for you, but make sure you are quite boundaried about when you check those messages and when you reply to them.  And the final thing I would consider is really important for best practices is having great communication with your clients, and that above all will determine how you both feel about the website experience and about the website design as well.

It’s interesting how. 

If we feel that we haven’t had a good experience, it impacts our feelings on everything else, including the design. So you can have an absolutely brilliant design, but if you feel like the experience getting there was like swimming through treacle, then. You are not gonna love it as much as if it felt like a really secure experience.

So to make sure you stay on top of communication I have in my terms of service, which are available to all website designers in my website Designers Contract pack on, which is at courses dot this demanding life.com. They have all the terms of service that I use in my own business and they are editable documents that you can use in your business as well.

It tells clients when they can expect to hear from me regarding regular updates on the website. It also tells them kind of what will happen next that um, if they email me, they can expect a reply within 48 hours. If I’m not going to be available, a member of my team will. Email them, and it’s really, really clear that communication is the key to what I do.

But I would also say that good communication has been the secret behind the success that I’ve had as well. And now I really want to share that with you.  So. That is what I consider to be best practices in website design industry. If you have any thoughts on it, I would love to hear from you. You can find the podcast@websitesmadesimple.co.uk.

There is a contact form there that you can drop in a message if it’s about the podcast, if it’s about website design, if it’s about anything, really come and find me. I would love. To hear from you and if you decide to put these best practices into your website design, I would love to hear your results that do come and share them with me.

So until next time, bye for now.