When people start designing websites, it’s natural to focus on how they look: the colours, fonts, images and layout. But a beautiful website that loads slowly, breaks on mobile or confuses visitors won’t get results.
The most successful websites strike a balance between looking great and performing well. They load quickly, work smoothly on every device and make it easy for visitors to find what they need.
So, if you’re designing a website, here’s how to keep performance at the heart of it.
1. Plan Ahead
Every successful website starts with a plan. Web design involves a lot of moving parts, and problems can crop up at any stage. Planning ahead helps you stay on top of everything and solve issues quickly when they arise.
Before you start building, think through the details:
- What is the website for, and what do you want visitors to do?
- How will the pages be structured, and how will visitors move between them?
- What will the menu look like?
- How will the written content be laid out, and how will the design support it?
- Which features, animations or integrations do you really need?
Every feature you add affects how fast your website loads, so ask yourself if each one earns its place. The clearer your plan, the smoother your project will be.
2. Build on Clean, Flexible Code
When you’re new to web design, looking at line after line of HTML and CSS can feel overwhelming, especially with a deadline looming. The important thing is not to panic. With experience, coding gets easier and you’ll learn to plan for problems before they happen.
In the meantime, focus on keeping your code clean, simple and well organised:
- Use a mobile-first approach. Design for small screens first, then adapt the layout for larger ones. Most visitors will be on their phones.
- Build flexible layouts. Use modern CSS techniques such as Flexbox and Grid so your layout adapts smoothly to any screen size.
- Use proper HTML structure. Clear headings, lists and sections make your website easier for search engines, screen readers and other developers to understand.
- Avoid unnecessary code. Every extra script, plugin and style sheet adds weight to your pages.
3. Test as You Go
Testing is one of the most important parts of building a high-performing website. Don’t leave it all until the end.
Check your website regularly on different devices and browsers, including phones, tablets, laptops and desktops, and in Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Edge. Test your menus, forms, buttons and links to make sure everything works as it should.
Fixing problems as you find them is far easier than trying to untangle them all at once just before launch.
4. Keep Loading Times Fast
Speed is one of the most important parts of website performance. People go online because they want information quickly. If your website keeps them waiting, many will simply leave and visit a competitor instead.
Speed also matters for SEO. Google measures how fast and smoothly your pages load through its Core Web Vitals, and uses this as part of how it ranks websites.
If some of your pages are loading slowly, here’s where to start:
- Optimise your images. Large images are the most common cause of slow pages. Resize and compress them, and use modern formats such as WebP.
- Embed videos efficiently. Rather than uploading video files directly to your website, host them on YouTube or Vimeo and embed them, ideally with lazy loading so they only load when needed.
- Use lazy loading for images further down the page, so they only load as visitors scroll to them.
- Limit fonts and scripts. Each extra font, plugin or tracking script adds to the load time.
- Use caching and good-quality hosting. These help your pages load faster for every visitor.
Use Google’s free PageSpeed Insights tool to test your pages and see exactly what’s slowing them down. It can be a bit fiddly at first, but a little time spent here will make your website perform far better.
5. Get Expert Help When You Need It
There’s nothing wrong with asking for help, especially if you’re new to web design. If you’re stuck on something, or you’d like advice on a specific issue, an experienced web designer can save you a lot of time and frustration.
And if you’d rather leave the design and build to the professionals, a good web design agency can create a fast, user-friendly website for you from the start.
Design for Performance, Not Just Looks
A website that performs well keeps visitors happy, ranks better on Google and turns more visitors into customers. By planning ahead, keeping your code clean, testing as you go and prioritising speed, you can create a website that looks great and works brilliantly.
If you need help with your website, or you’d like a high-performing website designed and built for you, get in touch with Whelan Web Design. We’re a Waterford-based web design agency helping businesses across Ireland.
