How to Use a Minimalist Approach to Create a Website Your Visitors Will Love
By Keith Curreri • Published on June 2, 2017
When you’re creating a website, regardless of your main goals, you want to build something that’s easy for your visitors to navigate. If you’re flooding users with tabs, graphics, and pages, you’ll quickly find that they end up abandoning your site in favor of a competitor’s that’s easier to understand. Here are some tips on making sure that your site takes a minimalist approach in order to provide a pleasant user experience:
Don’t be afraid of white space
You don’t need to fill every inch of your site with colors, text, and images. White space packs a powerful punch and allows a user to digest exactly what’s going on. While you may see it as a lack of content, white space actually works to highlight the rest of the pieces. To use it effectively, pick only the most important pieces of information you need to include. Delete the rest and let the white space do its job.
Make your navigation bar intuitive
When users can’t figure out how to make their way around their site, they’ll get frustrated and give up. To avoid this situation, your navigation bar needs to make sense. Limit the number of drop down tabs so as to avoid confusion, and make sure each tab is clearly labeled so users can find exactly what they’re looking for.
Be ruthless when it comes to content
When you’re passionate about your product, you probably have lots of text you’d like to include on your site. You’ve got lengthy product descriptions, long bios about your employees, and other tales you think users would be tickled to read. While some of this gives your company personality, too much text makes your site overwhelming to a user. Be sure you’re taking the minimalist approach when it comes to content. Include necessary details like product descriptions, hours, and where to find you, but leave out unnecessary information.
