Improve Your Website Design… By Simplifying It

By a show of hands, who out there has ever visited a website that appeared so convoluted that you couldn’t make heads or tails of it? Well, okay… we won’t be able to actually see those hands, but we’re guessing it’s everyone reading this.

Your business’ website should be full of information about your company, but one thing you want to avoid is an overload of the senses, especially on any given page.

While at first glance, this tip seems like an extremely obvious one, we’ve all been to websites where the pages are chock-full of both essential and nonessential elements. These are what you might call “busy” or “cluttered”… if you’re being nice. What you want to do is consider what each specific page is trying to convey to a visitor, and then focus on only those elements that help do that. Which means that, yes, that cute little political cartoon that cracks you up needs to go.

Many websites start off simple enough, but over the years, small additions here and there can start dragging it down. Business owners will often add social media widgets, sidebar elements, multiple links, etc., not realizing that as these things collect, they begin to clutter up what used to be a well-designed page. What you want to do here is “kill your darlings,” which means that you get rid of unnecessary elements, even if you personally enjoy them.

This is definitely the epitome of the “less is more” idea. Many business owners make the mistake of creating a huge number of pages. What they don’t realize, however, is that some of these pages will often repeat the same information as others or could easily be combined with one or more other pages to provide a more streamlined experience. For some businesses, a lot of pages is absolutely necessary, but if you can cut down the number of pages on your site, visitors will find it easier to search around.

Content that appears on your site without the need to scroll down is what’s known as being “above the fold.” This is where you want to put your best foot forward in terms of main content, a call-to-action, and any other vital element. Your goal is to grab a visitor’s attention right away. If you can do that without forcing them to scroll, then you’re a step ahead of your competition.

With millions of colors available, how can you possibly choose only a few? After all, isn’t it fun to make your website as colorful as possible? Well, it might be fun, but it’s not very practical, and it certainly isn’t visually engaging once you start going overboard. Keeping your site’s color palette simple will make viewing more pleasant for potential customers. This will all depend on your specific brand and whatnot, but try starting off with a few colors, and then expand from there.