Keep It Simple, Stupid!
Whether you are an business owner, designer, developer or marketing professional, it is important to understand the connection between user experience and web design. When I say understanding the connection, I really mean how the visual appearance of your website affects your web traffic.
In 2012, Google performed a study on “The role of visual complexity and prototypicality regarding first impression of websites.” This discussion revealed that a visitor on your website judges aesthetics within 1/50th to 1/20th of a second. Can you even imagine how fast that is? In many cases you have already made up an opinion about a website even before it finishes loading. Their study also concluded that visually complex websites are not as appealing as simple websites. Want to make your web visitors happy? Keep it simple.
Ways to Keep Your Website Simple:
- White Space: Stay away from complicated color schemes and those dark backgrounds. Too many colors can be confusing and text on that dark background is hard to read. Instead, use white space. It looks clean, professional, and your visitor’s eye will appreciate it.
- Do Away With Distractions: Get rid of those pesky pop ups that were popular 10 years ago. Nothing is more annoying that opening up a website and having to click out of a pop-up to get to the information that you are actually interested in. Try to keep advertisements within the website. Also, you don’t need that talking cat dancing in the bottom right hand corner of your website. No one cares what he has to say anyways.
- Streamline Your Navigation: If your menu is hard to navigate, your user will lose interest and move on. Try to minimize the amount of pages in your main navigation and organize them in a way that make sense for your visitors.
- Responsive Design: If your site isn’t responsive from device to device then it is outdated. It isn’t friendly to make your visitors using a mobile device to view your website in a desktop version. Keep your designs responsive so that any user from any device can easily view your content.
Need a little inspiration to keep it simple? Check out this TED Talk by John Maeda, the former president of the Rhode Island School of Design. “He is dedicated to linking design and technology. Through the software tools, web pages and books he creates, he spreads his philosophy of elegant simplicity.”