Anyone can build a website nowadays with some training, but building a great site requires an understanding of the principles of web design. You see, there is more to creating a website than just having it look good as there are various accepted rules that just makes everything flow more easily.

Hierarchy

Whenever somebody comes to your website they will land on your home page. The principle of hierarchy is that your home page is used to tell visitors about the most important information regarding your products or services. Visual hierarchy involves the designer structuring the website in such a way that the reader can instantly tell the order in which they should read the content. In other words, make sure that your home page guides people towards the information that is key to your website and give less important information a less prominent position.

Proportion

Proportion is the way that two elements of a design relate to one another. If you look at a typical WordPress website, then you will see that the bulk of the information is on the left with the right column being used for snippets of information and links. This scale works well as it tells people the roles that are being played by both areas, but just remember that you should never split things up evenly as symmetry does not work so well on websites.

Repetition

By repetition we mean that certain design elements remain the same from your business cards, to letterheads, to your website. This continuity even on the various pages helps to create a sense of uniformity, which people love and of course one of the key principles of web design is to create a flow from page-to-page so that people know they are on the same website as before due to each web page having recognizable features.

Harmony

Harmony in a design is important as it gives the feeling of everything actually belonging together. Harmony creates balance and it gives a sense of the web designer being in control with all of the information laid out in an easy-to-understand manner – this is appreciated by visitors to the website. Do not have blocks of various sizes scattered all over as this is difficult for the eye to follow.

Contrast

Having everything looking the same is boring and that is why contrast is one of the most effective design principles. You need to offer some contrast by using various fonts, colors, image sizes, and do so between two different design elements of the website. This helps to create more of a visual impact for the visitor and is more likely to lead to the kind of interaction that the website owner wants from their visitors.

Alignment

Alignment links to the actual structure of the website. It deals with the way in which two elements, that are linked, work together from a visual perspective. Take for example a piece of text with a corresponding image. How will the text be positioned according to the image? Will it be to the left, right, with the image above it, or perhaps side by side? The alignment of such features will have a major role in determining what people think of your site when they land there. Keep things aligned to keep it looking organized.

Dominance

The idea of dominance in effective web design is that you use your key point as a real focal point on the page. This could be a call to action button, a sales pitch, gallery, or anything else that contains the main message that you want people to get out of visiting each page on your site. Think carefully about what the primary interest is for the web page and make sure that this is not hidden away or people will simply not understand what the point was of the page.
These are the fundamentals of web design to be aware of, but we are not even talking about complex issues here. Instead, these are web design basics that can make a real difference to the way that your website looks and how it is used by your visitors. These principles remain no matter what the design trends are at any given time as they form the absolute core of the structure of a website. Keep them in mind and you will produce something that is not only visually appealing, but you will also see an improvement in the way people use your website and that in itself is worth a lot.