You are a core part of this evolving change. Aren’t you? Leading a simple life makes you more happy and joyous compared to the decorated life. The same is now implied in the web design landscape.
Simplicity is the key to the elegant website. The more you understand this, the less you focus on ornating it. “More the Better” concept is bygone. Today, “Less Is More” concept is gaining grounds. Users prefer clean designs which include less UI web components. Google homepage is the perfect example of this concept. The team focused more on what users are looking for and not on the design. So, they turned out with a plain design; company’s logo with a search bar. Hence, it is safe to say that minimalist web design offers higher user engagement rate, easy navigation, and makes it more appealing.
What all factors prove Less Is More concept is picking up the steam in the web design landscape”?
The Use of Whitespace
It is also known as the Negative space. Though being labeled as negative, it has a positive impact on the web visitors. For instance; Amazon, the #1 eCommerce site worldwide has millions of products of vivid brands to shelve in still, it provides a smooth experience to the users. The reason behind it is, Amazon focuses on minimalist design. Though the homepage displays featured products along with various offers and deals yet, the experience is good. Sufficient space to tour and let users know what is trending in the store.
Removing unnecessary elements from the website is not the designer’s goal. But doing so extends the click area for users. Also, the white space enables designers to highlight the key content to seize users’ attention. This automatically improves the user experience and upsurge the user-engagement rate. But remember; don’t eschew all the bells and whistles from the site. Doing so will thwart the purpose of using minimalist web design and it will lose its essence. As it is known as white space, it’s not white all the time, designers use various colors to add life to the vacant space.
Color Schemes
Each color defines its purpose of use and that’s why it has a great value while designing a website. Be wise in choosing the right color for your website. For instance; Facebook, the #1 social media networking site uses blue color to represent its domain because blue is the color for professionals and corporate. When you look at the Facebook homepage, it is simple. The use of the components is minimal. But the color blue used in the logo and other areas makes it look beautiful and elegant.
To focus on simplicity aspect, various web designers use contrasting colors. Therefore, when you have nothing to add, you have color palettes to play with. If a background color is darker in shade, the font color is dull or lighter in shade or it may be vice-a-versa. This is the best practice to enhance the look of the site and take the users’ focus to the significant information or required actions.
Font Styles
As said by Jeffrey Zeldman, “Content precedes design. Design in the absence of content is not design, it’s decoration”. You know this very well. Don’t you? To complement the modular design, apart from bold font styles, ornate or thin font styles also zest up the look of the website. This truly depends on the design template.
Just as contrasting color schemes, large or bold font style increases website’s readability resulting in enhancing the web experience. The main purpose of experimenting with different font style is to incline users’ attention towards the content and help them understand the context. Using large or bold font styles offers a clean line on the web page, the letters are exactly the same in stroke size while the white space between each letter enhances users’ reading ability. Also, using such font styles won’t affect the performance of the website. Therefore, it can be a better option in replacement to images.
Final Thoughts
User experience being the main focus, “More the Better” concept did not live up to the expectations. The use of unnecessary images on the homepage, animated videos and flashy elements not only slow down the performance but also ruined the web experience. That’s why designers adopted “Less Is More” concept. With fewer UI web components in use, it naturally enhances the experience of web making the website look refreshing and improves user interaction. Hence proved that “Less Is More” concept is picking the grounds in the web design arena.
Author Bio
Kim Smith is a Content Consultant at Goodfirms.co, a full-fledged research firm for top web design companies. She’s been journeying through the world of content marketing for more than 4 years. Her experience spans in areas like mobile apps, start-ups and social media. Online you can find her on twitter: @contactkim11
