Ease in good web design

Original author: Cameron Chapman
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Simplicity in website design does not have to mean minimalist aesthetics. Simple sites simply remove all unnecessary elements from design, content, and code. While minimalist sites mostly meet these criteria, there are many sites that cannot be classified as minimalistic, but they are still simple. This article lists some of the benefits of a simple website design, as well as some easy methods to simplify the design process.





Benefits of Simple Design Sites



1. Easier navigation

Simple sites do not contain unnecessary information. This makes site navigation easier for two reasons: basically sites will have fewer pages and sections, the site design is easier to understand, which makes it easier to find navigation elements.

A simple website design can be a good solution to the usability problem of navigational elements. Several methods for creating a simple design for a site:

  • Use only one navigation menu,
  • Make sure that the navigation menu is displayed on all pages of the site,
  • Use sub-navigation menus so that the main menu is not too bulky,
  • Do not use drop-down menus for navigation. Instead, incorporate the navigation elements into the design itself. Basically, this will make site navigation easier.


2. Simple design loads faster

Creating a simple design generally results in small file sizes. And small files therefore load faster. Also, if you stick to a simple site code, you won’t include several style sheets, call several JavaScript files, or a large number of any other content that will increase the number of HTTP requests. Fast-loading and fast-running sites will be better received by users.

3. Content is easier to perceive

When your design does not contain a lot of decorative elements difficult to perceive, the content of the site takes the main place.

One studyshowed that 79% of users went through the pages of the site, but only 16% of users read everything from start to finish. It’s best to work with these users who just walked around the site than try to deal with them. Putting content in the foreground and in the center of the page will make it easier for users to perceive. These users will find your site more user friendly and most likely will visit in the future. 4. Simple sites are easier to create





If the design of your site is simple, then the code will accordingly be the same. Creating a design with a simple layout, with one or two pages of a template and simple typography will be much faster than creating a site with 8 sections (each with a different page template), difficult typography and background, which requires difficult layout and programming.

Just be careful with creating a site that looks simple, but is actually quite complex. Try to make the code as easy as possible. Sometimes just by making minor changes to the elements you can achieve simplification of the site code without a noticeable design change.

5. Simple code is easier to debug

If your code is simplified, it is easier to find errors in it. If you have a list of styles with 300 different properties, it will be much harder to determine what exactly is the problem than if you had only 30 properties.

Look for ways to simplify your code from the start. Combining CSS properties and definitions can make code much shorter. The combination of style lists and JavaScript files will also greatly simplify the entire site code. Before uploading files to the server, take advantage of special programs that will remove unnecessary content from your lists of styles, scripts and other files (after cleaning, just make sure that everything works as it should).

6. The smaller the file sizes, the less space they will take on the server

It has already been mentioned that simple sites will have small file sizes compared to complex ones. This means that your sites will take up less space on the server and the site will not use a lot of traffic. While this is not a problem for small sites that have no more than 1000 visitors per month, for sites with a lot of visits this can be a good way to save. Some minimalistic sites with multiple images will be smaller than 100kb, while more complex sites can reach up to 1mb. This means that your lightweight site will use 10 times less traffic than complex and heavy. If you have a lot of content or visitors, it will be better to simplify the site and thereby reduce the file size.

How to simplify your sites





Remove unnecessary decorative elements

Many website designs have a large number of decorative elements that do not really serve any purpose. While it is not necessary to remove absolutely all the decorative elements from the design, it is worth removing at least some of them. Often this helps make your site easier to read and more elegant.

Elements that can be removed or simplified can be image borders, shadows, additional images in the header and footer of the site, and additional images on separate pages (in most cases, a pair of images is enough).

Ask yourself - is this element really so important?

This is the main issue when creating simple sites. You should ask yourself this question about every design element, code, or content.

See which items on your site can be combined. Are there any pages that can be combined into one page? Can you combine styles to simplify style lists? There are probably elements in your design or code that can be combined.

Make sure your code is as simple as design

A lot of designers focus on design and do not pay enough attention to the template code. The template code for some simple sites is completely messy. Make sure your page layout is as simple as you can. This may be a decrease in the number of styles in your style list or the number of JavaScript effects that you use. It also means writing good, standards-compliant code.

It also means that you must select the appropriate CMS for your site. Some CMSs are very complex and, while some sites take advantage of this complexity, the same CMSs can be detrimental to so many sites. Choose a CMS that has only those functions that you require or that has the ability to enable or disable functions if necessary.

Great examples of simple website designs



The following are some examples of excellent simple website designs that will give you ideas for simplifying your website designs.























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