In website design, less is more. When creating your business website, avoid the 3 Cs: Complicated, Cluttered, and Confusing. Instead, strive for simplicity. With a simple design, your website will be easier to navigate, more pleasing to the eye, and more inviting to potential customers.
So in designing your website, employ the KISS rule:Keep It Short and Simple. Whether you’re making a house-selling app or your company’s website, here are some ways to KISS:
1. Start with the essentials
Before starting to design your website, think about the elements that you want to prioritize. What do you want to show to your customers first and foremost? Which elements are essential, and which ones can you do without? By starting with prioritization, you can avoid adding unnecessary features to your design as you go along, helping you come up with a simple layout and saving you time in the process.
2. Skip the ads
Unless your website’s primary goal is to rack up ad revenue, which is not the case for business websites, skip the ads entirely–or at least keep them out of your homepage. Advertisements can make a website look cluttered, and they can pull the focus away from what you want your audiences to see.
3. Have minimal pages
Having too many pages on your website can overwhelm a user, leading them to be unsure of what to click next. Worst-case scenario, they exit your site when they see that there’s too much going on.
Sticking to the necessary pages only helps users focus on the essential parts of your website. Moreover, having a minimal number of pages increases your site’s user-friendliness as well as makes it look more organized. To trim down your pages, try merging two related pages into one, then eliminate the pages that you know are just there for show.
4. Use a simple color scheme
Choose an attractive color scheme that is congruent with your brand’s personality. However, avoid getting carried away and choosing too many colors for your website design. Otherwise, your website will look too complicated to the eye and distract users from the focal points.
Select two to three colors at the very most, then if you want variation, use different shades of the same color–but not too much.
5. Set a clear call-to-action
What do you want your user to do when they arrive at your homepage? Do you want them to subscribe to your newsletter? Check out your online store? Read your latest blog? Watch your promotional video? Choose one call to action and set that above the fold (the portion of your site that is still viewable as a user is scrolling down). And the trick is to chooseonly one.
6. Use white space
White space is the area of your website that has no content. It doesn’t have to be necessarily white; it can be other solid colors or a subtle design or texture–anything that is not distracting. White space diverts users to the center of attention, which is the main point of information on the page. It also helps make your website look less cluttered.
7. Eliminate unnecessary elements
As you’re creating your design, test it out to see how it looks live. Now, you can see your website from a user’s perspective. What are the elements that serve little to no purpose? It could be social media widgets, footer links, or blog meta details. Get rid of the unnecessary elements you see, especially if they are bringing no value to your main content.
8. Replace text with visuals
If there are text-heavy parts of your website, consider replacing them with infographics or other visual material instead. Users will find visuals more appealing and enjoyable to look at. More importantly, visuals get the message across much faster and more effectively.
9. Find out what’s not getting clicked on
Use a heatmap tool to identify which parts of your website are not getting clicked on by users. Getting rid of these elements can further simplify your website and make it look more appealing.
10. Decrease choices
The more choices that users have, the more difficult it is for them to make a decision. Thus, it’s best to limit the options on your website, whether it be on the menus, varieties, or categories. In this way, users will find it easier to make a choice, as well as make that choice faster.
If you want to attract more audiences to your business website, simplicity is vital. Forgo multiple color schemes and one-too-many website widgets. Instead, stick to the essential elements and practice minimalism in each aspect of your website’s design.
