Many websites now follow the less is more rule and with popular brands such as Instagram making use of this, it is clear to see why it works.

• How Minimalist Web Design Can Improve the Customer Experience

Minimalism doesn’t necessarily mean simplistic; creating a minimalist website is quite complex and can be difficult to get right. Below we look at the 5 essentials for a minimalist web design. If you need a nice web design, just visit this award winning website design agency and tell your preferences.

Why Minimalism?

Those who do minimalism well will get the many benefits that come with a minimalist web design. Many of the most successful companies in the world use a minimalistic approach because when you have a great product, you don’t need to oversell it. Take Apple, for instance; their stores are minimalism at its best. Below are some of the benefits of choosing a minimalist web design:

• Focuses on content – a minimalistic approach allows the user to focus on the content you want them to, rather than having to scroll and click links to see what they want
• Easy to maintain – whilst creating a great minimalist website takes time, the upkeep is much easier
• Easy to navigate – users who would usually leave as they can’t find what they want will be able to gain access to your most important content or products straight away
• Negative space creates a calm, uncluttered experience for the user

Now that we’ve seen how minimalism can benefit your website, we can get into the essentials needed to create a minimalist website.

Consistency is Key

Generally, minimalistic websites are highly artistic. If you have an artistic flair, creating a minimalistic website will allow your creativity to run wild. Whilst design is important, any user should be able to easily navigate through pages or products. The structure of your website will allow consistency throughout. Once you have created the perfect page, ensure you use this structure throughout your website. 

If you aren’t artistic, you can hire a web designer to work alongside you, to ensure that your website is created beautifully and consistently. There’s more to a great, consistent website than meets the eye. Successful brands win through an integrated Digital Marketing approach, says John from Keen LTD Web Design agency. Whilst taking a minimalistic approach is one way to create a stunning, visually pleasing website, your business also needs to optimize SEO and should be logical to navigate.

Negative Space

Negative space does not mean an unfinished website. In fact, trying to fill every space with information or images is more likely to make your website look unfinished and untidy. When creating your website, only include the essentials. When you strip away the unessential pieces of information, you leave a minimalist web design at its finest. White space has been proven to have a calming effect on the user, bringing peace and clarity. In a world where you can easily get overloaded with information, stripping back and only seeing what you need to can be refreshing.

Negative space is there to draw attention to your product or design. This allows users to navigate effortlessly through your site and only see what you believe is important. When negative space exists, you become more focused on the content that is included on your website and are more likely to be precise with the images or text used.

Choose Colours Wisely

Minimalistic designs don’t need to stick to greyscale or monochrome. If you so wish, you can work like this, but choosing the right colours can have just the same effect. Your page isn’t suddenly minimalistic if you decide to change everything to black and white. The colour scheme is just one element of minimalism. When choosing colours, you may want to use colours or tones that match your branding or logo.

As a rule, don’t choose more than three colours to work with when going minimalistic. Another route is to use a colour tone alongside a range of grey tones. You may also want to work in pastel shades, as these have a low saturation whilst achieving a high luminosity. Before starting the process of web design, you need to have a colour palette ready. You can create colour palettes in WordPress before you begin your design process.

Only Use the Best Images

In minimalism, images are used sparsely and when they are used, they are to the highest quality. One perfect image can speak a thousand words, and this is what you should always keep in mind when choosing images for your website. To those who aren’t experienced in web design, a professional image can be the difference between a user trusting the site or not.

Many minimalistic web design images don’t contain lighting or shading or are flat images. Whilst you may want to stick to this idea when choosing images, it isn’t essential to achieve minimalism. To create the best images for your site, you need to know how to take gorgeous product photos. One flawless photograph is enough to show the user everything they need to know.

Typography is Everything

When there isn’t much going on with your website, typography becomes a key element in the artistic process. Choosing the right typography is the difference between your website looking classy or tacky. When choosing a minimalistic web design, you should also choose a less is more approach to text. This means keeping all your text clear and concise, meaning you must have the ability to summarise well. 

The typography you use doesn’t need to be fancy and unique; Helvetica is one of the most popular typefaces across the globe and is used for adverts and logos for many of the leading brands. When choosing the best font for your site, use a font that resonates with your brand. If possible, match your website font to your brand font, or use fonts from the same style.

Achieving a minimalistic web design is about concentrating on the important things and putting only the very best images and fonts into your design. When done right, you can achieve a highly aesthetic website, which is easy to navigate and maintain.