Add LINE
TimTech
Book a consultation
Book a consultation
  1. Home
  2. /News
  3. /Nine principles for a website that looks good and works

Nine principles for a website that looks good and works

圖片預留
2025.07.25Updated 2026.10.07
  • Business websites

Summary

Design is the hard part of building a site. Get it right and the rest is easier. Get it wrong and the site does not do its job. Nine principles that keep a design from failing.

Website development is a complex job, and the biggest challenge in the whole process is web design. Get the design right and the rest of the work becomes relatively easy; get it wrong and your website won't be able to do its job.

This article brings together 9 common design principles to help you avoid major mistakes in web design and get the most out of your website.

If you want to learn more about the website development process, see this article: The Complete Guide to the Website Development Process

Why does web design matter?

Before we start, let me talk about why web design matters and whether you should hire a web designer to design your site.

Google rankings

The most important purpose of web design is to help you keep as many visitors on your site as possible and get them to do what you want them to do (share, buy, subscribe).

If you neglect web design, visitors won't stay on your pages. To Google, that means your website can't provide valuable information to searchers, so it will rank you lower. This eventually becomes a vicious cycle, and your website's traffic won't grow for a long time.

That's why Google rankings are highly correlated with web design, and higher-ranking websites usually have good web design. But that doesn't mean good web design alone will earn you high rankings.

Share

On this page

  • Why does web design matter?
  • Google rankings
  • Should you hire a web designer?
  • Nine principles of web design
  • Set one website goal
  • Simple, clear design
  • Clear, explicit navigation
  • The F-pattern layout
  • Use visual hierarchy
  • Rich content
  • Grid structure
  • Fast loading times
  • Make your web pages mobile-friendly
  • Conclusion

TimTech

Ideas, made real.

We help B2B companies turn the website into a long-term asset: a clearer position, search that compounds, and inquiries that actually get handled.

Explore

  • Home
  • News
  • FAQ
  • Cases
  • Contact

Services

  • Website Development
  • Search growth
  • From inquiry to close

Industries

  • Print shops
  • Court-auction leads

Contact

  • Email：service@timtech.tw
  • Address：10F.-2, No. 118, Dazhong S. St., West Dist., Taichung City 403533 , Taiwan
  • LINE：Message us on LINE

© 2026 TimTech. All rights reserved. | Power By TimTech

  • Privacy
  • Terms

If you want to learn more about improving your Google rankings, see this article: SEO tutorial

Should you hire a web designer?

Should you hire a web designer? Let me get straight to the point.

If your goal is to attract as many visitors as possible while also having an attractive website, the best approach is a visual editor plus a template, which lets you instantly create a good-looking website with SEO built in.

If your goal is to showcase certain work and you need entrance animations, hover effects, and scrolling effects to present it, then you really do need a web designer to plan your site's design.

So your website's goal determines whether you should hire a web designer.

Once you've sorted out the web design question, I'll move on to the principles of web design to help you check whether your pages meet the standard.

Nine principles of web design

Set one website goal

As mentioned above, your website's goal determines whether you should hire a web designer. Now let's talk about why that goal matters for web design.

Under this principle, what you need to do is identify the "one" most important goal of your website. Not two, not three, just one.

If you look at many examples of failed websites, you'll notice that when a website lacks a core goal, it ends up being neither one thing nor another, producing confusing content, confusing topics, and confusing design.

So what you need to do is identify one website goal and focus on it. Everything you do on your website, including page design, content guidance, and calls to action, will become consistent. That's when your website really starts to work.

Simple, clear design

Once you've set a website goal, you'll naturally find that your page structure becomes simpler and your page content is less cluttered. That's the simple, clear design I'm talking about.

Simple, clear design covers colors, images, and fonts.

Colors can convey messages and evoke emotions, so when choosing colors, keep your website goal at the center. It's best to use no more than three colors, and they should complement each other.

Images directly affect what people see, including illustrations, photography, and even video. So clarity and color tone are a very important part of image design; don't overlook them.

Like the first two, fonts can grab attention and convey messages even more precisely. However, because there are few web fonts available for Chinese, apart from headings, body text mostly sticks to common web fonts, leaving little room for adjustment.

Clear, explicit navigation

A clear, explicit website menu helps visitors find the information they're looking for.

For example, if I'm interested in a website's content and want to explore working together, I usually look in the top menu for "About Us" or "Contact Us."

Or when reading an article, I don't need to read the whole thing; I just click the section heading I want in the table of contents.

If you also want to guide more people to do what you want on your website, try adding buttons directly to your website menu and a table of contents to your articles to encourage clicks.

Clear, explicit navigation depends on planning your website structure in advance. If you're interested, see this article: Website structure planning

The F-pattern layout

Reading research shows that the F-pattern is how most people read web pages. In other words, with digital content we still tend to read from top to bottom and left to right.

So when ordering information, whether text or images, try to follow a top-to-bottom, left-to-right structure so visitors can browse the page naturally.

Use visual hierarchy

Also related to reading habits, visual hierarchy uses color and size to present information, letting people see at a glance how important each piece of information is.

For example, use large, medium, and small headings to structure your content, or make one section a different color from the others to draw attention.

All of this helps visitors absorb and digest the message we want to convey, which is the only way to truly communicate.

Rich content

If you've got all the points above in place, the amount of information is no longer a constraint. Even articles thousands of words long can be laid out in an orderly way, so you don't have to worry that too much text will go unread.

Helping people absorb richer, better content with less effort is also what Google wants us to do: deliver valuable information to the people who need it.

So what you need to do at this stage is fill your website with rich content. Avoid content-farm articles and meaningless copy-and-paste, because they won't help your readers.

Grid structure

The last point about visual design is grid structure.

A structured grid design keeps content neatly arranged, helps align elements on the page, and keeps the page clean.

You could say that all the design principles above ultimately rely on a grid structure to tie them together, so the principles can truly be realized on the page and result in an attractive website.

Fast loading times

After designing a website, the principle many people overlook is site speed. Site speed seriously affects Google rankings, and a slow website makes people not want to stay long.

The factor that most easily affects site speed is image size. Images that haven't been compressed and resized take a long time to load, so avoid them as much as possible.

For images, I recommend keeping each one under 100kb. As for videos, you shouldn't upload them directly to your website at all; instead, embed them using an external link.

Make your web pages mobile-friendly

Finally, another principle people often overlook is forgetting to test on mobile after designing the desktop version, which ends up with broken layouts.

Mobile devices, whose share of usage keeps growing, are also very important to Google. So if your website doesn't have a mobile design, you could lose 30% or even more of your traffic. When designing web pages, don't forget to pay attention to the mobile design.

Conclusion

This article covered nine web design principles to keep in mind. I hope it helps you design websites that are both attractive and effective. If you put each of the points above into practice, the rest of your website work will be much easier.

Previous

Planning a site structure: eight pieces of content you need

Next

SEO and SEM: six basics of search engine marketing

Related articles

  • Redesigning a company website: fifteen things to get right
    Business websites

    2026.08.16

    Redesigning a company website: fifteen things to get right

    When a company site needs a redesign, how to judge that first, and what to watch…

  • What belongs on a company website? Fourteen features, basic and advanced
    Business websites

    2026.08.16

    What belongs on a company website? Fourteen features, basic and advanced

    Common pieces of a company site: content management, product pages, SEO, more th…

  • Company website design: planning, structure, and what to design for
    Business websites

    2026.08.15

    Company website design: planning, structure, and what to design for

    How to design a company site around its goal: information architecture, how peop…