Clean and simple.
When we sit with a new client to discuss what they want their website to look like, the two adjectives we hear most often are "clean and simple".
This isn't a shocker. I don't think too many clients are on the hunt for "messy and cluttered".
But interestingly, during the design process, what starts off as "clean and simple" can quickly veer into cluttered territory - and it can be hard to pull a site back from the precipice of disaster once that line has been crossed.
Clean and simple does not mean easy. In fact, a truly clean design can be the hardest kind to maintain. It's like buying white furniture. That white couch looks gorgeous in the showroom, doesn't it? Bring it home to your kids and your dog and your coffee-drinking self, and before you know it, it's unrecognizable.
So, you're getting ready to build a website. You have a ton of information to share but you really want it to be clean and simple. How do you do both? A good web design and development studio will be able to suggest some solutions for you, but here are a couple of ideas:
1. How will your content be delivered?
There are alternatives to pages and pages of text. Infographics can communicate a ton of information in an aesthetically pleasing, concise, and interesting way. Videos might be appropriate. Think not only about what you want to say, but how your audience will be most receptive to your information. Having a proper content strategy in place is key.
2. Bring three examples of designs you really like.
People like to say "clean and simple", but what they really mean is "I want a white background and I don't like bright colours". It's absolutely possible to have a website with a white background and no colour to speak of that's still not clean and simple. Having some specific examples of what you like - and being able to explain what you love about them - will help your designer to discern exactly what you mean by clean and simple (or whatever words you use to describe the style you like.)
3. Don't share everything up front.
The challenge of keeping a clean design pristine and neat is prioritizing content. There are so many important key messages, so much information we want to share up front. Right off the bat, many a crisp design is doomed. We need to get over the idea that users want to see every single important message on the homepage. Leave something to the imagination. If clean and simple are truly the things you're striving for, you really need to prioritize what absolutely must go on the front page, then trust your UX team to create the rest of the site in a way that's intuitive, drawing visitors in to read more and learn more.
If someone gives you a wrapped present, do you throw it away because you don't know what's inside the box? Absolutely not - you can't wait to see what's inside.
4. Resist the urge to add "one more thing".
You know how when you're getting ready to leave the office at the end of the day you decide to do "just one more thing" because it'll only take five minutes? And it snowballs into one more little thing, and one more, and one more, and before you know it it's two hours later, dark outside, and you're the only one still at work? Adding one more thing to a design can throw it completely out of whack or start the snowball effect of many little things, and before you know it, your clean design is completely mangled.
Coco Chanel, arguably one of the most fashionable women of all time, recommended that a woman should remove one accessory before leaving the house to avoid overdoing it on the baubles. Less is always more - the same goes for websites. 0
