Jane Bai
“It’s a cliche you’ve heard over and over again: good design can make or break a website, business, logo, etc. It’s an everyday part of life that flies over our heads and is deceptively complicated to achieve. To make life easy, we here at Growth97 have compiled the most efficient and effective ways to ensure that your platform runs smoothly!“
A Minimalist Approach
Think of the big, household-name companies that seem to reach into everyone’s life today. Youtube, Google, Apple, etc. Even though their aesthetics are all made of just a few colors and shapes, their logos are instantly recognizable across all languages and cultures. They are living proof of the power of minimalism when incorporating design into a business and platform.
As a rule of thumb, try to keep things as simple as possible. Never crowd your website, logo, etc. with more than 5 colors. Don’t take this the wrong way: feel free to experiment with simple color combinations and schemes off of which you can build a palette! Just make sure to not overwhelm and crowd your platforms. Clutter is never appealing. The “louder” you are, the more forgettable you can become.
Typography is also an understated art. Keep your messages short, simple, and scannable. In a world where attention spans are only getting shorter, having well-spaced and concise content will help to boost your user interaction. You can get into the specifics or a product or delve into deeper territory on subpages, but make sure to keep your main sites as neat and short as possible.
Keep your options on the homepage as minimal as possible. It may sound counterintuitive, but presenting your audience with more choices leads to them taking less action. While sifting through tons of options is overwhelming, it’s much easier to click on a more broad and general subject first and then go into specifics if needed.
Navigation
As we touched on before, presenting too many choices and options can be overwhelming to your audience. It can be unrealistic to assume complete minimalism is possible: just think of all of Amazon’s categories and subpages! In situations like these, user navigation and usability are extremely important. Begin with the most broad and essential navigation options first, and then create sub-branches as needed.
Make sure to use familiar wording to ensure that your audience can confidently find what they are looking for. No matter how you design your website’s navigation system, always try to make it so that visitors can get to their destination with as little clicks as possible. This may take lots of time and experimentation but it is crucial to audience engagement.
Unity
What do you want your audience to understand about your company? Within the first few seconds that they land on your webpage or see your logo, they should have a simple yet strong impression of what your company stands for. Youtube’s logo, for instance, incorporates the universally recognizable “play” icon, so first-time users understand that the platform is used to stream content. Their message is so strong that if you tell someone to close their eyes and imagine a sideways white triangle within a red rectantangle, they will unavoidably and unconsciously think of Youtube.
The athleisure giant Lululemon’s homepage space is filled largely by images of models wearing their attire while playing various sports. The action, comfort, and style of the company are all perceptions that pop immediately into the mind of shoppers when they land on the retailer’s page. These values are important to Lululemon’s target audience and centering the visual aesthetic of their webpage around them draws stronger impressions and engagement.
In recent years, Halo Top has emerged as the undisputed victor in the very competitive field of low-calorie ice creams. Their success can be attributed to the fact that since day 1, their company branding and value has been very simple and neat. By showing the calorie count on each of their products, they are appealing directly to their target audience: fitness enthusiasts, dieters, and other customers who are limiting their caloric intake. In the past, their advertisements focused exclusively on the calorie count. By basing their advertising and design behind this one core value, Halo Top has made themselves present in almost all major grocery chains.
Check, Check, and Check!
It’s a concept that’s been drilled into your head since preschool: always make sure to proofread and check for errors! A single typo can kill a user’s first impression of your platform and/or cause both minor and serious logistical problems. Make sure to check for the sneakier culprits of bad design too, such as dead links and misaligned images.
Excited? Good! Using these tips, tricks, and teachings, it’s time to take your design game up to the next level. In this loud and distracting world, you’re now ready to make your company, product, etc. truly stand out.