8 Web Design Ideas for Kids & Teen Readers

Modern teens are born into and with technology. They grow with it—online and offline. Thus, it’s imperative to design a conducive and teen-friendly online environment for them as they traverse it for various reasons. For example, modern teenagers use the Internet to study. Still, web designers don’t know exactly how to create websites that meet their teenage needs fully. In this post, our experts discuss eight design ideas to make your website teenager-friendly. 

Understand Their Web Usage Motivations

If you want to design websites that will resonate well with teenagers, you need to understand what drives them there. You have to ask yourself, why do teens visit websites in the first place? Here are some of the key motivations for their online visits.

• They want to do their school assignments
• Teens want to learn new skills 
• The desire to find and enjoy the fun
• They seek the latest entertainment, such as games, music, and videos
• Teenagers want to socialize with friends and family members
• They follow the latest sports updates, especially sports
• They want to shop 

Speed is Key

Whether they visit the Net for academic or social reasons, or want to order an essay,  teens want every site they visit to load super-fast. Just like their adult counterparts, they get frustrated with slow-loading sites and quickly log out. Simply, teenagers lack the patience to remain on a sluggish website. Therefore, make sure high speed is an integral component of your design matrix. 

When designing, avoid anything or component that could slow down a website’s speed. For instance, you should avoid filling them with high-resolution multimedia that won’t work very well. Remember, most of them visit the Internet using older or second-hand devices they inherited from their parents. Therefore, such devices are poor at running high-resolution features.

Include Accessible Games

Your teen-friendly website design should include easy-to-access games. Remember, teenagers love playing. Therefore, include games that are appropriate for their age and use. However, you have to incorporate games they can play via the browser alone because of the prevalence of viruses. 

Act their Age

When designing a teen-friendly website, you should put yourself in their shoes as a big brother or parent. However, you ought to use that position to discern their needs and where they are at this stage. This consideration is critical since you will be a wise designer who understands your audience. Therefore, you should present everything they see on that site in a manner that doesn’t look too adult. Also, don’t use graphics or multimedia that is too childish for them to associate with. Remember, teenagers log out of a childish site faster than they exit “adult-ish” ones.

Moreover, you have to mind color when designing teen websites. The reason is that teens have a different color preference that’s unique to them. Remember, appropriate color plays a significant role in enhancing their sense of pleasure and expression. Also, their love for bright, vivid tones still lingers. So, just take a look at the best teen sites and notice that most of them have beautiful color schemes and designs. For example, they feature different shades of pink to cater to the needs of girls. It works well when you use it on logos, some background sections, and titles. Properly applied bright pink shades make teenage girls feel good and stimulate them. Moreover, pinkish hues are perfect for page backgrounds. When dealing with teenage boys, you can use blue to give them what pink gives their female counterparts. 

Integrate Mobile Friendliness 

We live in a mobile-friendly world. Therefore, you have to design your websites with mobile devices in mind. Remember, teens use mobile devices to access the Net more than they do desktops. Unlike adults, most of them don’t own laptops. When working on mobile devices, they use touch-enabled devices that require accuracy. Therefore, it becomes more challenging to use dropdown menus and small buttons. Therefore, design their websites with these considerations in mind. Try using large text sizes and avoid using dense text because these make reading more difficult. Remember, when teens fail to access websites on their mobile devices, they log out faster due to their impatience. Guess whom they will blame for their decision to exit prematurely? They don’t blame themselves, no. Instead, they will blame you, the designer!

Make it Social-Friendly

From mobile-friendliness, we focus on social media. Initially, we saw that teens browse the Net for academic and social purposes. Therefore, make your website social media-friendly if you expect them to love using your sites. Remember, teens are not good at replying to emails the way adults are in formal settings. Instead, they are good at commenting on, replying to, and writing messages on social media. So, you need to include enough social media connections on your website to let them transition to them seamlessly. 

Mind Your Textures

Textures are critical to your teen-friendly website design. They are beneficial for creating depth effect and make clear pages more attractive to the eye. They are also useful for white-page backgrounds. Taking care of these features will help your websites be more attractive to teenage visitors.

Use Funky Creative Types

Lastly, your website design should take care of font matters because teens love given font types. When you integrate appropriate teen-friendly types on your websites, they become more attractive. The creative typology will make your teen visitors want to look at the websites’ messages. Don’t forget to make them funky.

For example, you can use original fonts for logo works, main titles, and menu items. This way, you will be better placed to break teen barriers on websites and allow them to focus on their online school assignments. They will also enjoy their other online adventures thanks to your thoughtful design.

Here’s all you need to know about teen-friendly web design to create appealing websites for this category of users. Integrate these practical ideas into your design work and make your resources friendlier to teenagers to expand the coverage of your resource or product.