It is not enough to have great content and an audience if your website is not properly navigable. The majority of customers fail to find what they are looking for on the website. By aligning your website appropriately and defining various tasks on your website using appropriate UI elements, you will see the difference for yourself. You will lose visitors if there is no call-to-action on your website, and they will leave without making any impact on your website.
To create a catchy, original, and visually attractive website, you must understand the importance of user interface elements and how they work in getting traction and improving the overall customer experience. UI elements help visitors understand what the website is about, what is going on with the products, and how they can interact with the company. Including UI elements will help your business grow and discover new opportunities. Elements to consider are part of designing the web page, so you must ensure that they will help you deliver a positive user experience and generate more leads.
So, in this article, we will see what UI elements are essential even for the primary website to improve the website’s flow, attract more customers, and lead them to take some actions without bouncing back.
1. Navigation
Without navigation, the customer would not know where to look next while going through the website. It is one of the driving factors that helps customers move from one place to another and control the content flow. It defines the planned route for all users to follow when they visit the website. If this flow is broken, they lose context and purpose and lose interest.
Navigation is the primary setting for any website, ensuring smooth usability and accessibility. Navigation sets some actions and guides the customers to fulfil their goals. Excellent navigation results in a positive user experience and helps them understand what is going on on your website. So, every UI designer must consider this factor while designing the website, as it helps to mould the content accordingly later in the designing process.
The user interface helps the user navigate various interactive elements, such as buttons, switches, tabs, bars, etc. Each element has its importance and contributes equally to creating a unique interactive website.
2. Menus
Visible menus are the core navigational element. It helps the users understand the highlighted pages and the content of the website. It displays the number of pages available to see the significant content. It is a graphical control that allows users to interact with the website and navigate through several pages listed there. Some designers display categories and how the content is organised in the given interface.
Placing a menu on your website plays a vital role in getting traction. Each appearance of the menu has a different performance. So the designers must go through research and analyse the potential expectations of the customers to conclude where to put the menu. To find the best-suited place for your menu, you can conduct A/B testing to understand which placeholder is getting more traction, and then go for it to generate leads.
Having a well-designed menu will significantly speed up the process and improve the user experience, as you can see in the below example, where a mobile app’s side menu displaying different categories is supported via icons.
Source- Moneywise App
3. CTA (call-to-action)
A call-to-action button helps the customer perform any action on your website, such as subscribing to the newsletter, signing up for a form, providing contact details, getting quotations, etc. It helps the customers interact and get whatever they want from the website. A CTA performs the task for which the website is designed. CTAs are the most critical UI elements that work as interactive controls. CTAs within a layout are buttons, tabs, links, etc.
CTA buttons drive product interaction, which has an indirect impact on the usability and navigation of the website. Whether you have everything in the right place but ignore or place the call-to-action button incorrectly, users will miss it and forget to take any action. It may have an effect on your business, increase your low conversion rate, and degrade the user experience. As a result, every design must pay special attention to CTA and place them where every user can see them and where the flow of the content allows. You can use strong and persuasive content to entice users to click on your CTA buttons and links. The button with a receiver is an important interactive element on the screen, allowing the user to navigate to their desired destination.
Source- Website on cooking seafood
The above example shows how the age indicates the action to take, followed by a theme that attracts users visually and verbally. For this age group, the CTA for the above web page should be strong enough to get readers to look at the recipes and do what they are intended to do. However, the CTA button is not appealing enough. So having a great page will not solve your purpose.
4. Bar
A bar displays the clickable items on your website, helping the customers take some steps quickly and initiate the interaction. This bar helps the user understand their current stage of progress. Some of the most commonly used bars on websites are as follows:
Tab bar: You might have seen the tab bars on the bottom of the screen on your mobile devices. These tab bars help you quickly access some applications without scrolling through your entire phone for them. It increases your accessibility and saves you time. You generally place those apps that are frequently used.
Source- https://uxdesign.cc/why-your-tab-bar-needs-helper-text-9936531996af
The loading bar is a control element that informs users about the current status of the action they have performed, such as downloading, opening a page, clicking a video, and so on. the process is in the active stage, the user can view it via the loading bar, as shown in the below image.
Progress bar: as shown below, this type of bar element allows the user to provide feedback on a result of the current process thus far, such as showing how far you have come while working on a specific task.
5. Button
Suppose you want to add an interactive element to your website, allowing users to interact directly with the digital product and send commands to achieve specific goals. In that case, you must consider adding a button to your website. With a button, you can perform any action or trigger a task, such as buying a product, making a purchase, starting a video, downloading a file, etc. As far as websites go, you might not come across any without a button.
Buttons are the important website elements as they initiate the task and interaction. You can include as many buttons as you want, but they need to be strong enough to create an impact so that the user can click them. Different shapes, sizes, colours, and fonts will make a significant difference to the purpose of the buttons.
So designers must spend time and effort creating a practical button with proper nouns defining what the button will do. As you can see in the below example, the “Go Back” button.
Source- Page 404
Different buttons are available for different purposes and outlooks are widely used in mobile and web interfaces. Some of them are mentioned below.
Hamburger button: This button is used to hide the main menu. Whenever the user clicks it, it will expand the menu. You must have seen the three horizontal lines (specified as “hamburgers”) that have now become the critical element for interaction. Also, it saves a lot of space for catering the actual menu on the screen. Most users know what this button does and look forward to it whenever they spot it. This menu frees up the majority of the space and makes the interface more minimalist, while also allowing for more critical layout elements. But some say this menu can be confusing for those who rarely visit the website. Sometimes they can just miss this button. But overall, including a hamburger menu is an efficient option.
The Plus button (another button that allows you to add items to the list) It is represented by the “plus” button. In some cases, you can click it to add new items, such as contacts, files, notes, etc. By clicking this button, the user will be directed to the modal window for creating content. In some cases, you can use this button to allow the users to choose from various items on this button.
In the below example, the “play” button allows the user to add their choice of content and directs them to the particular screen to perform that action. This button improves the user experience.
Source- Button Concept
The share button allows users to share the content on various platforms. For better understanding, these platforms are mainly specified as the icons, such as Facebook, Twitter, etc.
6. Switch
You can simply use this UI element if you want the user to toggle a specific option on or off. It is commonly used in modern interfaces because it is a direct imitation of the switches that the user is accustomed to. To make these switches more user-friendly, use contrast and animation. When incorporating this UI element into your website, ensure that the purpose is clear to users so that they can switch to the right side without much effort.
Using animation will make the interaction smoother and more natural, allowing users to instantly determine whether or not the switch is active.
7. Picker
A point picker is another important UI element that allows users to pick a point from a row of several options. Generally, it comes with one or more scrollable lists of unique values, such as hours, minutes, dates, measurements, currencies, etc. Users can scroll through the list and choose the required value and set that value. It is one of the interactive elements commonly used in interfaces where you need to change the settings like time and dates.
8. Checkbox
The checkbox is a graphical UI element used by the user to tick mark the content. You can also use it to create a to-do list where users can select the items they have completed. In the below example of a mobile application, where the user selects an item from the list when it’s completed, that item fades away. You can add many more functionalities as per your skills and make the website more interactive.
Source- To-do list app
9. Card
Cards are highly regarded in modern interfaces. These are small rectangular or square modules that contain various types of information using other UI elements such as buttons, text, rich media, and so on. You can intelligently add cards to make the best use of the available space and provide the user with multiple content options without the need to scroll the screen. You can add cards as an entry point for the user, where they will see various types of content side by side that they can access as desired.
Source- Image by Crank
10. Carousel
Carousels are a user-friendly UI component that allows users to go through a set of content, such as images, videos, cards, etc. This content could be hyperlinked to more sources or content on the internet. You might see this option on various online shopping websites or mobile apps. The significant advantage of using carousels is that more than one piece of content can occupy the same area on the screen. It is like a horizontal scroll bar with content on it.
As you can see in the below image, There are two arrows for scrolling right and left, allowing you to select any item from the list.
11. Comment
This UI element is pervasive on educational websites where you want your readers to comment on your content or provide feedback. It improves user interaction by allowing direct interaction with the admin. In the educational field, you will also see this UI element on many shopping websites, where the company is asking you to review the product you have purchased. Sometimes, you will come across a section where you can submit your queries by putting them in the comment section of any website.
12. Dropdown
Sometimes you want to give your user several options from which to choose.Like the hamburger menu button, this UI element also saves you space by listing all the items under the dropdown menu. You might have seen this menu when selecting a country or state in any form, as you can see in the below example, displaying how the dropdown menu works and looks.
Source- Image by Shakuro
13. Form
Another one of the most important UI elements to be included in any website is the forms. Forms help in generating leads for your business. It allows the users to take several actions, such as asking for a product, generating queries, contact forms, email subscription forms, etc. You must place your forms in the appropriate place on the website to be noticed. This way, you can record the email and contact of the visitors, and you can approach them using that contact. This will improve your business’s reach and allow you to get to know your customers better.
In the below example, there is a payment form where you enter all your credentials and the account details to proceed with the payment.
Source- Image by girithaara
14. Icons
One of the latest additions to modern websites is the icon UI element. It makes the website more interactive with the icons. It improves communication by using images as icons. These are the buttons that you can click to perform specific actions, upload data, etc. You can use any image for your icon to support its purpose. The user must understand from the image what they are intended to do.
As you can understand from the below image, reports are identified as the graphs, the speedometer identifies speed, etc. While designing, take care of what image you choose from the repository. Most basic images will be available in the CMS tool that you choose for designing the website. If not, you can get specific images from various sources for the icon’s image.
Source- Image by Eddie Lobanovskiy
15. Search bars
Search bars are used out of necessity to search for the specific information you are looking for within the website. It allows users to input content, and the website will provide you with all the available information on that content. It helps the customer save time by eliminating the need to go through the entire website.
16. Kebab menus
It is another representation of the hamburger menus. Instead of using the three horizontal lines, kebab menus are the three vertical dots, allowing you to expand the menu and unleash the new items available on the website. Just like hamburgers, this menu saves a lot of space on your website and makes it cleaner.
Below are other types of menus available with many similarities except their representation. Each type of menu serves the same purpose.
17. Notifications
Today, websites are consistently upgrading and providing new content to their customers. Whenever there is new content on the website, it notifies its customers via notifications, so they do not have to go through the website repeatedly waiting for the new content. It will help users look at the notification and go through it if the content is of their interest.
In the images below, the bell-shaped icon represents the notification. Most websites use the same bell icon to represent the notification.
18. Pagination
This UI element works well and gets noticed when the website has many pages. To keep track of what page you are accessing, the website must use the pagination UI element to make it easier for users to know which page they are on. I am a shopping fan, thus giving another example of a shopping website. Every shopping website gets a long list of items that cannot fit onto a single page, thus creating several pages to ensure visibility and accessibility. You can see the pagination (page numbers) at the end of each page.
19. Sidebar
Some websites display the categories via a sidebar menu. It enables users to navigate through the sidebar’s various items. It has an arrow that allows users to make it visible or hide it to better view the actual website window. You can also configure the sidebar settings so that they appear differently and more appropriately when accessed via mobile devices. To make the sidebar work properly on mobile devices, use the responsive mode.
20. Slider Controls
A common user interface element assists the user in selecting a value or a range of values. It has a slider that you can use to set a specific value. In general, you’ve seen and used this slider control element on your mobile devices to adjust volume, brightness, and other settings. On some websites, the slider control is used to specify a price range in order to narrow down the list of items.
This list is not exhaustive. You can choose from a variety of UI elements to create an interactive and innovative website. In this section, we’ve listed a few UI elements that you must include in your website. Make sure you follow best practices and avoid messy web pages when using different UI elements on your website. You can use the following best practices on your website when using UI elements.
UI Design Element Best Practices
Many top giants in the market go by these best practices to use UI elements on their web pages.
- Ensure complete visibility as it helps the users understand what is going on on the website. Do not mess up your website by including many UI elements, as it might scare the customers.
- Make sure that you design your UI as per the requirements and interests of the customers. Use real-world language to cater to your audience to help them engage with your content.
- Also, provide your customers with the freedom to take any action on your website.
- Make sure to maintain consistency throughout your website. It means if a specific button is meant to perform an action on a web page, it must perform the same action throughout.
- Better providing a user-friendly UI accessibility to all the content allows users to experience another level of interactivity for proper engagement.
- Maintain a flow throughout your content to keep your customers engaged.
- Make sure your content is visible and not filled up with UI elements. To achieve this, you need to place the elements properly wherever they are required.
Conclusion
UI elements are critical in driving sales for an online business. If you don’t have the right elements for the job, the customer will lose interest and leave. However, they will be effective if they are visible to customers and perform a specific action. In this article, we discussed some of the most commonly used UI elements that you can incorporate into your website to improve the overall user experience.
Also, make certain that you adhere to best practices when designing the web page. Otherwise, you will end up with a sloppy website that will not attract any visitors.