Website Aesthetics and Overall Design

With website design, beauty is more than skin deep. How well your website looks can make a great impact of how well you are able to reach out to your customers and encourage them to interact with the website.

Indeed, the use of images, good layout principles, color and contrast can communicate and convey meaning. It can establish certain feelings – trust, being energized or peace. Your overall design can enhance customer confidence, engage your users and establish an atmosphere by which the content and information is more easily accepted by the readers.

Here are the basic elements that contribute to visual design aesthetics:

• Your choice of your color palette is important since colors are psychologically associated with certain feelings and products. For instance, light pastels are great for baby products but not for energy drinks. Red and black are great colors to use for products related to technology and action but may not be advisable for a wedding services website. Color combinations also add depth, emphasis and differentiation. As such, the right use of colors helps make a web page easily scannable.
• Lines, shapes and form. Lines create divisions, definition and textures. Lines can create shapes and three-dimensional objects.
• This creates a certain feeling brought about by how a surface is perceived.
• Choose a font that is easy to read online. In general, Sans Serif fonts are ideal. Typography also relates to font size, color, spacing and alignment.

Here are some elements you need to examine to improve the overall design of your website:

• Is the layout well-organized so that the user can take one look and get an instinctive understanding of how the information is organized? Is there too much clutter and distractions that can detract from the message the page is trying to convey? Is the layout designed to be responsive – to change depending on the device by which the website is accessed? Is the website short enough to load quickly but substantial enough to provide the necessary information?
• The combination of text, text color and background can contribute to make a page readable. The font size should be big enough to make it readable but small enough so that the website does not look too clunky. Choose only the necessary number of fonts to produce contrast – but do not choose too many fonts since that will be too confusing and distracting. There should be variation of text for headings and subheadings.
• Color and whitespace. A webpage does not have to be too dense with color and content. Whitespace is also necessary to give the reader’s eyes some rest and to guide him through the content. Your calls to action should also be supported by whitespace to guide the eye to the action you want them to do. Your color palette should be used consistently for all pages of the website.
• How well do your images support your message? Use images that are relevant to the topic and that feature real people. These images should be clear, be in correct proportion and are in high resolution.

About Adaptivity Pro

Adaptivity Pro’s team of expert web designers and artists understand aesthetics and how it is applied to SLC web design. We don’t mean to brag but our portfolio provides examples of good-looking websites. Adaptivity Pro websites also follows the principles of Utah SEO to ensure that the websites are effective and engaging.