The web design of today is a lot like fashion – it changes rapidly. Therefore, web designers are not only responsible for coming up with the most effective and user friendly designs but they also have to keep a check on what is trending in the market to keep their web design up to date. Within a year we went from developing mobile friendly websites to responsive designs that work on all tablets, phone, and screen widths. 
Here are some helpful web design tips that all current designers should consider.
Make Users Happy
Designs like Facebook and Google are the future of web design – the less you do, the better! We are living in an age where users want speed and relevance and every web designer that fails to match up to these standards will not succeed in making the users happy. Icons, badges, pop-ups, buttons, banners, signs and ads can frustrate users and ruin their online experience. As long as your website is image centric with the correct content, loads quickly and has all information that the user requires, you will be on the right track to decreasing your bounce rate and increasing your conversion.
The Value of Research
Web design is an art and when it is done for corporate reasons, it requires thorough research. A website is a very important part of a business and therefore, it cannot be designed carelessly. Depending on the type of your business and your reasons to have a website, you must properly research on the type of look you want, keeping your business branding in mind. Internet is filled with dummy designs that you can take inspiration from but research must in no way be ignored as it will result in a poor design.
Spot the Golden Area
Designers do not only select the best suited colors and layouts for your website but they also have to take care of the user psychology. If a website is created to make online sales, then designers must really put an effort to know about the correct positioning of content and buttons as it can really have an impact on sales psychology online.
For instance, human eyes move from left to right and hence theories dictate that “buy now” buttons must always be placed on the right side of the web page. Designers should be able to spot “golden areas” on a web page so that they can place the most important web content on them.
Important web spaces should be recognized and used for the business benefits. Heats maps can be set up for testing purposes; you can collect information of the areas where majority of the users are looking at through knowing which direction their mouse is moving in. Testing is the key and must never be ignored as it plays a significant role in web design.
Design for Smaller Devices
Mobile phones carry more importance than computers and laptops these days, and therefore it will be a good idea to create a mobile version of a corporate website. However, it should be understood that a mobile website must represent the desktop website in its look and must be a lot lighter in functionality.