“Good design is obvious. Great design is transparent.”
Whether you’re designing a new website or an app, it pays to keep things simple.
Simplicity is about much more than using minimal colours and white space – it’s about delving deeper into the minds of your users and developing a product that “just works”.
No unnecessary fluff, no distractions, just an easy-to-navigate interface that does the job.
It’s a design philosophy that’s championed by some of the world’s biggest companies, including Apple and Google, and there’s a good reason for it. The easier a product is to use, the more likely consumers are to use it, and then share their positive experience with friends.
Below, we’ve put together five ways to simplify your website and app designs…
According to Hick’s Law, the more choices you have, the longer it’ll take to make a decision.
If you’re not a natural designer, it’s easy to want to put as much information on your site as possible to give visitors choice and encourage them to buy from you or sign up for a service.
But when you do this, you’ll likely end up with lots of important and unimportant elements on the same page, competing for attention, encouraging people to delete your app or click ‘X’.
To simplify your website or app, identify the key elements – signing up for an account, buying a product, watching a video – and remove everything else from view. The fewer distractions your customers have, the more likely they are to do the thing you want them to do: convert.
Whether you’re designing a new website or an app, cutting down the number of pages or tabs people can explore and click through makes sense. Trim the fat; keep your navigation simple and conversion-focused, fusing together elements that don’t need to be separated.
Get into the mindset of your users; when they open your app or visit your website, what are they going to want to do, and how can you remove steps and pain-points that stop them from doing it?
Putting best sellers on your e-commerce page, adding popular app features to your splash page and relying more on multimedia content like video and images will help you to convey everything you want to say, without making visitors feel like they’re reading a book.
Unless your business is wholly dependent on advertising, removing adverts from your site and app will increase engagement overnight. Adverts inject complexity into your website, not only increasing page size but slowing loading times and causing unnecessary distractions.
Almost half of all internet users now block ads, and those who put up with them are more likely to leave your site or remove your app if they’re bombarded with flashing images and videos every time they want to interact with your content. Look for an alternative method of generating revenue – like subscriptions and paid sponsorships – and cut ties with AdSense.
Negative space – the parts of your interface with no content, like menus, images, or text – is a great way to simplify your website or app and drive consumers to the right conversion points.
It’s all too common for sites to have hundreds of navigation options with dropdowns, and for apps to have endless pop-ups and tooltips, all competing for your attention. White space, on the other hand, breaks that up and creates a feeling of simplicity on an otherwise busy page.
Don’t think of white space as wasted space. As smartphones grow in size, taking advantage of the screen doesn’t mean packing as much onto a page as you can; instead, it’s knowing where to place content and use negative space for an elegant, sophisticated user interface.
Internet users skim. With so much content on the internet, the only way to properly attract attention is to create compelling copy.
Whether it’s a landing page on a website or an intro slide on an app, you should make sure content is displayed in a readable, user-friendly typeface, that long chunks of content are separated into bite-sized pieces of information, and that important content and information is highlighted with colour variations and formatting.
Keep content short, experiment with different content types (videos and images) and keep the focus on conversions. Your homepage doesn’t need to resemble a Wikipedia page; you should get straight to the point and explain the purpose of your business in 30 words or less.
Simplifying your website or app is about removing distractions and encouraging consumers to do what you want them to do.
Cutting out anything that’s unnecessary and making it as easy as possible for users to buy from you, sign up to your services or interact with your brand will help you hold onto customers in today’s increasingly competitive marketplace.
If you’re looking for help, depend on the Dundee app developers and web developers at Zudu. Call the team on 01382 690 080 today to arrange a free marketing consultation.
