What can social media sites teach us about web design?

Let's face it, social media and social networking sites are one of the hugest things to hit the online world in recent years. It's possible to spend hours and hours a day on YouTube – you may not get any work done on your other tasks and chores – but you're guaranteed to never get bored! Facebook just keeps expanding too – at the moment the site has a whopping 500+ million users. With all this buzzing social media activity, it can be difficult for a standard, simple website to have any impact at all – but rather than hanging your head in despair, it's time instead to take a closer look at what two of the most infectious social media sharing and networking sites can teach us about web design for regular websites.

To begin with, big part of Facebook's success is due to its web design. What's the first thing you notice about the Facebook site? It includes only two colours, a calming blue and white. Aside from this simple and clean colour scheme, some other elements of Facebook's web design are also immediately striking. The design of the site's navigation is very user-friendly, and easy to operate and comprehend. Facebook also features an easily locatable help section, as well as a search box that will display comprehensive results which can even be refined further according to more specific criteria. Web design features such as these make Facebook the enjoyable website it is because they allow trouble-free access of the site's functionalities by almost anyone of any age and level of computer literacy. Other popular features of Facebook's website design, such as the “like” application, encourage the easy sharing of information. Facebook also supports the sharing of video and polls which make the site an entertaining, interactive and informative as well as a social experience.

YouTube is a similarly addictive social media sharing site that has succeeded where other similar sites have failed due to its user-friendly website design. Some of the reasons for YouTube's success, aside from its entertaining content, are the functionality and accessibility of its web design that allows for the sharing of personal video clips, as well as the display of quality copyrighted video materials. One of the most useful things that YouTube can teach us about web design is that fun, interactive and search engine friendly content will always give you an edge over your competitors. All elements of your website design, including written content, graphics, blogs and videos, need to be entertaining as well as informative. Web surfers are attracted to audio-visual content, as are search engines, so including videos in your web design is a good idea for any online marketing strategy.

All of the elements of Facebook's website design can also be adapted to commercial web design to provide great advantages in user-satisfaction and online marketing strategies. Selecting a simple set of two or three colours and sticking only to them across the site is definitely the way to go for successful web design, as is providing a search box that allows visitors to easily navigate the website content and find the most relevant information to them. If you want your website to be as attractive as Facebook and as popular as YouTube, you should also consider favouring a web design that prioritises interaction. Interaction between site visitors and the website content can be encouraged by adding plugins for the sharing of content, as well as including entertaining elements such as videos, games, quizzes and competitions.