
First, put your user in focus. Bear in mind the goals your site visitors have and think of how you can fulfill these goals. Second, prioritize functionality above all else. Going for design trends such as parallax scrolling or ghost buttons don’t always make sense. These kinds of design trends may increase load time, be overlooked, or distract attention. If design solutions hurt functionality, you’d better not implement them. Amazon and eBay are not the fanciest when it comes to design; however, it doesn’t prevent them from being leaders among e-commerce platforms.
A line from Phil Libin, the founder of Evernote, is “people who are thinking about things other than making the best product, never make the best product.” I’m willing to overlook the fact that Evernote is too often a shiny distraction for creatives — a b…