Every designer will at some point strive to fight against clutter on a web page, whether it’s on your own site or on that of a client. The website’s design should ideally enhance the page’s purpose by laying the focus on content and usability. In order to produce an attractive and effective design, in most cases less is more.
Defining The Site’s Purpose
By defining the purpose of a site, you will be able to determine the focal point to emphasize on. Whether it is to display an achievement, to sell a product or to produce specific articles, the site would need to be designed to bring the attention to the content first. Defining the site’s purpose would thus help to keep the design on track. While designing, if additional elements are added, you would need to assess whether these add value to the purpose of the site.
Focusing on the Fundamental
When removing clutter from an existing website, what you remove would have as much importance as what you might add to a site. When unnecessary features are removed, the focus would be brought back to the essential purpose of the site. However, all elements that are left on the site would also need to be assessed for mistakes and errors. With clean and minimal designs, mistakes tend to get magnified.
White Space and Color
White space might be the first thing that comes to the mind when thinking about minimalist designs. An example is Google’s search engine. However pop of colors enable the designer to drive the attention of a visitor to a particular call to action or important message.