Simply stated, websites that are easy to navigate and feature the most essential elements convert well. Keep this in mind when designing your website.
If you are re-doing your website or creating one from scratch, you may be wondering what is the best design approach. In fact, it may be overwhelming to decide on themes, when in actuality the main objective of the website should not be overlooked. That point is if it will convert well. Conversion-friendly, easy to navigate, mobile-friendly websites are the way to go.
In order to achieve that, the trend and suggestion is to keep it minimal.
Why Is Minimalism Important when Designing Your Website?
Minimalism essentially means decreasing all the elements to only focus or include the ones that are most essential. This idea is to bring about greater attention to the purpose.
Try to limit or reduce the noise and obstruction caused by distracting elements. We often see successful branding using minimalism to effectively convey their message and show up in the overall design.
Take Apple for example:
Apple’s brand is one of the best examples of having a minimalist approach in mind when designing products. The design is clean and sleek and sophisticated, which creates a feeling of what their customer experience would be.
Your website should reflect you and your brand, your patient, or the client’s experience. If you want to promote a relaxing atmosphere, you want it to be minimal yet zen-like. If you want to show professional and clinical, keep it clean and crisp. You get the idea…
Minimalist designs are visually appealing and user-friendly, so it’s really not surprising that so many businesses prefer to have a minimalistic web design.
Also, it helps them boost their company’s bottom line by being much more conversion-friendly.
How To Take A Minimalist Approach when Designing Your Website
Your company’s website is the best business card you have. Your website should, easily, show everything people need to know about your business; where to find you to what the business is all about, your services, etc.
Websites that are not functional, take a long time to load, have too many distractions or are not user-friendly, cause people to bounce or leave the site.
If your visitors don’t stick around long enough to know who you are or what you do, they won’t actually get to know you or understand what you have to offer.
It’s a waste. It’s a loss of a potential client. It’s disappointing.
Instead of overcrowding your website with elements that are not necessary, feature only the most essential ones. Below we discuss the most important design elements you must consider to create a functional and minimalist site.
Creating a Minimalist Website
There really are just three areas that you need to focus on and make decisions on, in terms of the design to make it minimalistic.
- The Visual Elements
- The Colour Scheme
- Amount of White Space
For a thorough breakdown of the design and recommendations for each, we would need to evaluate your brand, vision, and tie it together for you.
However, here are some general guidelines to consider for each.
The Visual Elements
- Focus on functionality and the purpose (is it strictly visual or is it useful to have?)
- Graphics and details need to be appealing vs. distracting and again purposeful.
- Videos are more engaging than a single image and serve a purpose (to inform)
- Are images and videos optimized so that it doesn’t affect load time?
- Consider how much copy is on the site. Too little can miss the message, too much and no one will read it (use as little as possible but get your point across)
- Navigation should be easy to understand and use
- Choose a background image that represents the brand
The Colours Scheme
- Limit the use of colors to two or three key colors
- Use a monochromatic color palette to capture the eye vs. overwhelm it
- If you want to apply contrasting colors, this can work too, however in that case it’s recommended to incorporate white as a neutral as well.
Amount of White Space
- Also referred to as “negative space”, this is used to reduce the visible clutter and give the site some room. Use it to guide the attention of the visitor.
- Increase white space around the information you want to focus on
- Don’t have too many focal points on one view
- Don’t create a page where the user doesn’t know where to focus on
So there you have it, if you are designing your website, consider these tips in efforts to ensure your website is easy to navigate and will convert.
If you are looking to build a new website, or need guidance on redesigning your existing one, contact us directly for a consultation.
