While the global economy and overall market sentiments are pointing toward improving economic confidence as the reopening of the world and return to normal makes progress every day, there’s no denying that the drastic shift toward the online marketplace is a change that is here to stay. In fact, nearly everyone agrees that we were already well on our way to the full digital transformation of our economy, and the global pandemic just happened to speed up the entire process out of necessity.
However, one major issue of concern that’s been running rampant among newly-made online businesses is how they put too much effort into standing out with their web design and making the most complex pages possible that end up driving visitors away. And so, today, we want to remind everyone that simplicity is often the best principle to follow, most especially in the case of designing a purposeful website.
Complexity Weakens Overall User Experience
Although eye-catching and unique web designs are well-appreciated by any visitor, it is the overall user experience that makes them stay and converts them into actual paying customers for your products and services. And despite the glory and beauty that complexity will bring, it also encompasses the shortfall of weakening the user experience and often making the website clunky to use as a result.
- Visitors Find It Difficult To Navigate: Firstly, even though you make a good first impression by using fun animations and unique design elements, this tends to backfire in the form of making the website a bit difficult to navigate. And instead of finding what they were looking for, your potential customer might find themselves lost and inevitably exiting the page before they had any of their inquires answered.
- Overdesign Tends To Devalue Content: Secondly, relying too much on complexity and uniqueness for your website often leans to overdesign, which consequently tends to devalue the content found on your web page. Any content found might come off as lacking because the web design overpowered the important pieces of information, oftentimes leaving gaps for the sake of making the landing page look better.
- Challenging To Make Mobile-Friendly: Lastly, a complex web design will undoubtedly translate to being not-so-mobile-friendly because your web development team will find it extremely difficult to achieve the same look on smartphones and tablets. What’s worse, it could end up affecting load times, and potential clients will find themselves staring at a loading screen for far longer than they’ve anticipated, exiting the page before they could even reach any content.
Here’s How You Can Use Simplicity To Your Advantage
With all those reasons in mind, it’s clear that using simplicity as your basis for web design is far more advantageous than trying to be extravagant and complex to the nth degree. And to achieve such a look, we recommend that you follow these three simple rules to guide you in designing your website.
#1 Utilize A Central Theme For Your Color, Type, And Photos
Rule number one, we recommend that you decide on a central theme to follow for your color, type, and photos to establish uniformity on your website and make it look more pleasing to scroll through. Trust us when we say that visitors will notice when you forget to change one piece of text to the same typeface or suddenly deviate from your previous color palette. While it may seem like a minor annoyance, it could also be the one deciding factor for them to leave and look elsewhere.
#2 Minimalistic But Content-Driven Landing Pages
Rule number two, much like how you would design an apartment room, you want to be minimalist with your landing pages and strive to be content-driven, meaning that it answers all the important questions right at the get-go. For example, if you take a look at Apple’s web design, you’re greeted with all the important information in the most minimalist way possible, without missing the mark. In fact, even websites like Amazon find ways to look less cluttered despite their nature of business.
#3 Evolve And Adapt As Your Business Grows
Rule number three, we firmly believe that you must evolve and adapt your website design as your business grows because the same original look won’t do you well until the end of time. Things change, new products come to fruition, and general design trends might sway in another element’s favor, making growth-driven web development a far more effective approach due to its flexibility and continuous impact. Plus, it gives you the opportunity to square away any mistakes or clunkiness that you haven’t had the chance to fix.
Of Course, A Bit Of Complexity Still Has Its Benefits.
Likewise, while we have managed to give complexity quite an infamous look, it’s not as bad as long as you know when and where to use it. Uniqueness and extravagance will always have a role to play in website design because it helps customers remember you better; try not to overdo it, and you’re pretty much safe to go.
