Simple Website Design: 5 Key Tips

Busy website designs can be overwhelming and distract from your content. But how do you streamline web design and at the same time make sure it impresses visitors and drives action?

Simple designs don’t have to be boring. They can highlight your brand’s story, establish a professional business identity, and project a professional image. They also tend to be much easier (and quicker) to create.

In this post, we’ll discuss the benefits of simple web design. Then, we’ll share five best practices and show you how to create a simple website in minutes. Let’s get started!

Why Should You Opt for Simple Website Design?

Without knowledge of web design, it’s tempting to think that the best websites leverage features like animated images, interactive elements, and complicated layouts. Surely, this is a great way to impress your site visitors, right?

The most effective websites are often much simpler. They prioritize an elegant, clean look that facilitates easy navigation and lets the content speak for itself. If your site employs cluttered designs, it can overpower your message and distract visitors from carrying out desired actions, like making a purchase.

Simple website design is useful for creating a good user experience (UX) and enabling people to quickly find what they’re looking for. Plus, it enables you to focus on establishing a visual hierarchy that guides the eye naturally around your pages.

Another point is that feature-laden websites can often be very slow to load. By streamlining your efforts, you can boost content delivery times. This also allows you to improve your performance in the search engine results and capture more organic traffic.

5 Best Practices for Designing Simple Websites

Now that you know why you need to keep things simple with your website design, let’s talk about how to achieve this.

1. Use Minimalist Templates

Minimalist templates eliminate elements that aren’t essential to the core functionality or message of your site. Naturally, this depends on your website type, niche, and audience.

Typically, it means keeping graphics, animations, icons, textures, and images to a minimum. Of course, you can include these components, but you should prioritize quality over quantity.

Let’s say you’re curating a portfolio and you need to include lots of photos. Or maybe you run a fashion boutique and you want to show off lots of different styles.

In these instances, you could display images in a neat grid-style format so that they don’t clutter the layout:

You could also leverage a video/image background, which works especially well in a hero section. You can also soften the appearance of images (or shapes, icons, etc) by opting for templates with rounded corners.

2. Display Essential Information

As we said earlier, simple web design is about keeping unnecessary things to a minimum.

Sure, you want to add some information to your site. For example, if you’re looking to sell products, you’ll need to supply persuasive product descriptions.

Or, if you want to build strong customer relationships, it’s a good idea to share your brand’s story. However, it’s important to choose your words wisely.

For starters, people aren’t motivated to read long paragraphs of text or scroll through tons of content before they find what they need. That’s why it’s best to stick with short sentences and concise paragraphs and ensure that this information is immediately accessible.

3. Streamline Navigation

Another key part of designing simple websites is streamlining the navigation menu. This makes your site more user-friendly and helps reduce bounce rates.

Even if you have lots of products or pages, consider using dropdown menus:

Rather than presenting all your website links at once, you can organize them into distinct categories to keep things clean and tidy.

A neat and logical structure enables search engines to better understand your site. As a result, it can improve crawling and indexing efficiency too.

4. Embrace White Space

Negative space (or white space) is a powerful design element that’s often under-valued. Many website owners think of it as “dead space” or “wasted space” that doesn’t have any purpose on the page.

You can use white space to direct attention toward key features like call-to-actions and signup forms. This also adds a sense of balance and elegance to your layout.

5. Amplify Branding Elements

Without relying on domineering graphics or flashy features, you can let your branding elements take center stage. This ensures that your site remains visually aesthetic without cluttering up the design.

You might opt for bold typography styles that catch the eye and add a touch of drama to the layout:

This can also implement a visual hierarchy, which helps people consume your content in the most organic way. Meanwhile, some of the best design examples rely on a very simple color scheme.

Perhaps you’ll leverage clever combinations or sharp contrasts that increase memorability. Or, you could use color accents that direct attention towards important elements:

Note that you don’t have to use a traditional color scheme, or even stick with a classic white background. Many modern businesses, such as those in the technology industry, opt for a dark background that looks sleek and cutting-edge.

How to Create a Simple Website for Your Business

Now that you know how simple website design works, you’re ready to create your business website.

If you lack technical skills, it’s much easier to use a website builder like HeroBuilder:

You’ll get access to stunning pre-made templates and an intuitive editor to make customizations.

HeroBuilder is particularly great because it sets you up with a WordPress website. And, your site gets hosted on NameHero’s LiteSpeed web servers to accelerate loading times.

You can register for free on the official NameHero website. Thanks to the power of AI, HeroBuilder can generate an entire website with just a bit of input from you.

You’ll have to supply some information about your industry, preferred site structure, and website goals. You can also choose a clean and stunning template for your website:

Then, define exactly which pages you’d like to add, such as a home page, about page, services page, or testimonials page to leverage social proof.

When you’re done, HeroBuilder sets up a complete WordPress website with all the content, styles, and plugins you need. You’ll be taken to the WordPress Site Editor, where you can modify every aspect of your site:

Here, you can reorder items, remove those you don’t need, add new blocks, and customize each element on the page. Simply select an item to access the settings to the right, where you can adjust the font choice, color scheme, dimensions, borders, etc.

While editing your pages, remember to make sure that there’s enough white space. Meanwhile, you might like to apply your own color palette, insert a white background (if needed), or feature a key image/video in your hero section.

When you’re happy with your site, you can purchase an AI HeroBuilder plan. This includes web hosting, an SSL certificate, email accounts, and many other features. Plus, you’ll unlock the full functionality of WordPress, giving you complete control over your website.

Conclusion

When creating a business website, less is more in terms of web design. Not only can it look more professional, but it allows customers to focus on the most important elements like your products, message, or calls to action.

To recap, here are five best practices for simple website design:

1. Use minimalist templates.
2. Display essential information.
3. Streamline navigation.
4. Embrace white space.
5. Amplify branding elements.

HeroBuilder is the quickest (and easiest) way to create simple business sites in WordPress. It will generate all your web pages, and you’re able to apply your brand’s color scheme, logo, and fonts to every layout. Set up your website today!