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Making a website complex and confusing is easy. Only top website design firms in Auckland can achieve simple designs that offer fantastic user experience and that deliver a return on investment.
These tips and tricks are used by the best local Web design companies in Auckland. They will help ensure your website has a simple design that generates new business for your company.
#1 Remove Non-Essential Elements
One of the most visited websites in New Zealand is https://www.google.co.nz/. It’s also one of the most simply designed websites on the internet. This is the ideal example, therefore, of the benefit of removing non-essential elements from the pages on your website.
You don’t want to remove too much as visitors will get a poor impression of your business.
However, it’s important to remember the 80:20 rule. It is also known as thePareto principle and you may be familiar with it in other aspects of your business. For example, in many companies, 80 percent of profits come from 20 percent of customers.
In website design, 80 percent of the positive effects on your page will come from 20 percent of the content.
One of the most complex elements on a website is the navigation. If you can get this right by making it simple and intuitive, you will be well on the way to having a simplified website. Your website will also perform better.
Here are key tips for simplifying and standardising the navigation on your website:
- Minimise the number of items in your main menu. Usually, the maximum you should have is seven.
- Remove “Home” as one of the items in your main menu. Most website users are now familiar with the common design principle that clicking on a website’s logo in the top left of the page will bring them back to the homepage.
- Remove non-essential items from the main menu. Examples include your privacy policy, returns policy, and other pages that are important, but are not part of the sales generation process.
- Only use sub-menus when necessary and, when you do use them, have limits. Only go one level below the main menu, for example, and don’t include too many sub-menu items.
- Design your menus, particularly the main menu, from the perspective of visitors to your website rather than from the perspective of your business. Think about what a visitor to your website wants to find or do, and the flow that will get them to that goal. Design your menu around this.
- Use a standard menu design. On the desktop version of your website, this typically means a bar across the top of the page below the logo. On the mobile version, a hamburger icon (the icon with three horizontal lines) is ideal with it opening to reveal the menu items. Alternative, unique, or invisible menu designs add complexity so should be avoided.
#3 Make Your Content Easy to Read
Making your website’s content easy to read will simplify it and improve the user experience. Simplified, easy to read content has the following elements:
- Descriptive main headings
- Informative text
- Short paragraphs and sentences
- Every day, conversational language
- Sub-headings to break up sections of text
- Bullet-point and numbered lists
- Unique points and information – don’t be repetitive
#4 Use a Simple Colour Palette
The colour palette used on your website is incredibly important to the overall design, but you shouldn’t over-do it. Using too many colours will make your website distracting and hard to look at. The same applies if you get the colour proportions wrong.
Here are the key points to remember when it comes to colours on your website:
- Decide on a colour palette and stick to it – consistency is important, so make sure you use the agreed colour palette throughout your website
- The colour palette should have three colours – a primary, secondary, and accent colour, in addition to white
- Use complementary colours – the colours in your colour palette should work well together
- Use the60-30-10 rule– 60 percent for the dominant colour, 30 percent for the secondary colour, and 10 percent for the accent colour
#5 Use White Space Deliberately
White space on your website describes the sections of the page that have no text, images, buttons, menus, etc. Using white space as a design strategy is important as it makes the website less distracting and easier to read.
Therefore, avoid the temptation to fill as much of the page as you can. This ties in with the first point on this list to remove unnecessary elements, i.e. it’s okay if removing unnecessary elements leaves white space.
Simplify for Success
When getting a new website, you need a local web design company that understands the importance of simplified designs. By making your website eye-catching, informative, engaging, and simple, it will deliver on your objectives.
