A well-designed website will help you rank higher, expand your client base, and make more money, which is what every businessman wants. There are a few things you need to take care of when designing a drupal site to make it powerful, beautiful, consistent, and easy to use. In order to use the best Drupal design practices for your website, you need to know how the theme structure works and how to architect your content. The Drupal platform offers a plethora of adaptable options for personalizing the design of your website to make it more exciting and engaging. However, how do you achieve a professional appearance? How can you achieve the appearance of a million dollars without spending a penny? To make your great Drupal website design more appealing, here are some pointers.
- Ensure proper planning and wireframing
When designing a Drupal website, careful planning and wireframing are essential because without them, the entire process becomes a nightmare. Nothing is worse than attempting to design your website half-heartedly and returning to the drawing board with a poorly planned design strategy. We are aware of the power and adaptability of the Drupal Content Management System and how simple it is to present your content in any way you can imagine. But if there isn’t a good plan, it might go wrong.
Before you begin the design process, you must establish your site’s architecture and content strategy. Your page’s various regions, blocks, content types, and other elements must be arranged according to a well-thought-out strategy. You can try to keep the website’s aesthetics consistent throughout and make it easy for website visitors to navigate. Accounting for all of the output content while maintaining user-friendly links between pages can become complicated. Using a grid to organize your compositions and wires is a great way to keep your pages consistent and aligned correctly.
Nowadays, responsive design is in vogue. There has been an increasing demand for responsive web designs as the number of smartphone users has skyrocketed. To accommodate browsers and screen sizes of various devices, more concise planning is required. This will save you a lot of time and money in the long run and many iterations. When developing your website plan, the most effective strategy is to design for mobile devices first.
- Make use of generic designs
You can start with generic designs and move on to more specific ones as you design the elements of your Drupal website. The elements that are utilized consistently across the entire website are known as generic elements. Only a few specific pages display particular elements, not the entire website. Before beginning with the individual pieces, check to see that each of your base styles is ready to go. This will save you a lot of time and stop the development cycle from going through too many iterations.
Before you devote time to something that only appears on a single page, you can concentrate on styling your headers, buttons, and blocks, which are the elements that are most prominent. The Drupal principles of standardization, reusability, and flexibility work well with a standard grid. With the grid, you can make your Drupal site more visually appealing to visitors and save time by uniformizing the layout.
- Always keep your content fresh
Content reigns supreme everywhere, online and off. Before selecting a company to spend their money with, consumers conduct online research, so imagine what they might think when they visit an out-of-date website. They will immediately conclude that you have lost touch with the customer. Consider what you can update, what new products you can offer, and how you can reach customers by regularly reviewing your content.
Hard-hitting, enticing content is essential if you want to get the most out of a good website design and earn the trust of your audience. Make an effort to create original and high-quality content for your entire website. You can win the trust of 82% of visitors with custom content. When trying to persuade people to carry out the desired call to action—contacting your company or making a direct purchase of your products—be informative, engaging, and ultimately persuasive.
- Make use of images
You should ensure that the images you include in the design of your drupal site are pertinent. The purpose of images is to enhance a page and provide a visual aid to your discussions. You must ensure that your page contains relevant images. The important thing is that you don’t just use images. They ought to add value to your page and give your audience a great visual representation of your text to help them understand it. Your Drupal website will look more sophisticated with high-quality images.
- Keep the color scheme neutral
Choose hues that go well with the colors of your brand. Start with a neutral one like white, beige, or light gray. Bold colors like orange, red, or yellow can add a pop of color, while darker, more powerful colors like navy, dark green, or black can calm everything down. Your website’s color scheme can be changed as many times as you want, and Drupal provides you with a variety of pre-made options from which to choose.
- Explore a minimalist design
To make your Drupal website run faster, stick to the bare essentials. If you only want to keep what is absolutely necessary, you can have a design that is minimalist. The performance of the website can be affected by engaging modules and appealing themes. If you stick to graphics and calls to the database, the site can be much faster for visitors.
Tesla’s website (which was built with Drupal 7), is an illustration of a drupal-based minimalistic design. The choice of Tesla’s CMS perfectly complements its elegant and minimalistic design. Drupal does a good job of providing a high-quality video presentation for a model of the new generation of electric cars.
- Speed also matters
Your Drupal website may be stunning and easy to attract visitors, but if it takes too long to load its pages, it will most likely turn them away. When designing your website and keeping it running at its best, there are a few things to keep in mind. It is simple to download a number of Drupal modules, which you can use to speed up your website. These modules are fantastic assets that not only accommodate design aspects but also improve your website’s speed and functionality.
Additionally, having too many modules enabled on your drupal site can affect user experience and website speed. You can fairly determine, with some experience, which modules and files are necessary to make use of fantastic design features. Optimizing the media files so that the website loads quickly is one of the best ways to reduce load times. To keep things simple, you can use jpeg images rather than png.
- Get involved with social media
An extensive social media campaign should be the final part of your Drupal site. A business cannot succeed without social media because it is so ingrained in modern society. But the most important thing here is to find out which platforms your customers and rivals are using. Customers will be able to find you if all of your company’s profiles are linked together.
In the Editor menu, you can easily add links to your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn profiles as well as social media icons. When starting a business these days, especially one that operates entirely online, social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are essential considerations. If you already have a social profile, check to see if the name of that profile is similar to or recalls the domain of your website. If your website does not have a social media page, verify that the chosen name is available on all of the networks you intend to use.
Conclusion
Having a drupal site that strikes a balance between functionality and aesthetic appeal is one of the keys to a company’s overall success. People will be much more likely to buy your products and services and have faith in your company if your website provides them with the best possible user experience and visually appeals to them. By following these guidelines, you can make your website appear to have cost a lot of money and position your company as an industry leader.
