Designing Beautiful Customer-Centric Digital Assets
“The key to success is keeping things simple”
There are really two key digital assets relevant to businesses
ONE: Mobile digital assets, they are characterised by the following key differentiators
- Mobiles have low screen real estate
- The screen real estate is very expensive
- Mobile digital assets must be responsive
- Information architecture should be user-friendly allowing ease of information seeking
- On mobiles use short sentences, keep it punchy
- Always check for spellings and grammar
- Show business contact information
- Have clear branding
- Keep colours consistent, see here for inspiration
- Keep typography or fonts consistent
TWO: Website digital assets, they have a different set of characteristics compared to mobile assets
- Comparatively, websites have bigger screen real estate
- The home page screen real estate is expensive
- Think about visual focal points
- Information architecture should be intuitive
- Keep language easy and simple to understand
- Check for grammar and spellings
- Show business contact information
- Have a clear branding
- Keep colours consistent, see here for inspiration
- Consistent typography or fonts selection
What are the essentials factors for a great digital asset design?
Functional aspects or hygiene factors
- Have security certificate or HTTPS:// is a must
- Quick load time, do not make people wait for the site to load
- Communicate the purpose of your digital asset (website or an app)
- Show contact information or at least have a contact form
- Protect your site from spam attacks, back-end security
- Make your digital assets accessible
- Keep the webpage lightweight, this will help with load time
- Check for dead-ends, broken links and fix them
Aesthetics and design elements
- Consistent typography or fonts
- Clean design and clear branding
- No spelling or grammar mistakes
- Consistency in the use of brand colours
- Crisp and sharp images
- Clear information, use headings as appropriate
- Minimise the use of flashing images, graphics etc.
- Link to social media sites as appropriate
How to evaluate your web-based digital assets?
- Test the speed of your website using Google PageSpeed Insight tool, click here
- Test web page responsiveness or how your website will be displayed on mobile using Google Mobile-friendly Test, click here
- Test your website for broken links, use Broken Links Checker tool, click here to access
- Test website accessibility using WAVE tool, click here to see
- Get inspiration on the use of colours and understand their interpretation here