When you try to build your site, ideas will most likely come flashing down your head like a flurry. You might even find it hard to resist the temptation of acknowledging everything while trying to marry all ideas into one chaotic website.

For one, trying to be all of these things without proper planning and recommendation might be a waste of effort. Not to mention that website building is not as easy as copying and pasting.

In fact, it can somehow be considered to be a delicate art that needs focus and time.

Ask yourself this question: What really makes a website effective? Does it really have to be complex to be considered successful?

Well, web designers have this for a general rule: Keep it simple.

Why is it better to have a simple web design?

Too many graphics, images, tabs, and buttons to click will make your website too hard to look at. Your site visitors might even incur a headache just by looking at your page, and we don’t want that to happen.

Simple and straightforward website design is what we’re aiming for to avoid confusion. Besides, adding too much flare on your site will affect your site’s loading time. And that’s another factor that will add to the number of people abandoning your site.

Here are five ways on how you can simplify your web design:

Focus only on essential elements

While it’s true that building a website involves a little bit of alchemy and sorcery, involving silly magical incantations (as Severus Snape would put it) just to make a code work, patient web designers know what essential elements to focus on.

To actually get to the bottom of this science of building an efficient website will mean years of trial and error, and that’s completely okay as long as you understand what works for you and what doesn’t.

In this case, the principle “less is more” should be well-practiced so as not to overcrowd your site with unnecessary tabs that your users won’t use anyway.

Map out the user journey

Put yourself in the shoes of your users. Once you personally go through the user journey and find loopholes within your site, then you would have a better view of what to do and how to address the problems.

Does it answer to what your users need? Are some parts really necessary?

These are the things you have to consider to be able to produce a better journey for your site visitors. This could make for good conversion if you offer products or services.

Mapping out the user journey properly will result in your expected end goals because it’s one proof that you’ve communicated your message through.

Align the design elements

Putting all your attention to the development of your site in terms of the technical aspect might result in mediocre visuals.

Everything should be aligned when it comes to website building. From the command prompts to the design elements, each bit of the journey should be well-thought of and has to complete a larger picture.

Logo placements and fonts will matter all throughout your page, so they have to be placed strategically. Even the images, paragraphs, and ads are part of the picture so you have to make sure they are aligned with what you want your website to look like.

Putting it randomly just because you don’t have other areas to place it is a sign that you haven’t really thought of your design in general.

Remember the Pareto Principle

The 80/20 rule in web design applies to different site features. You can identify the 20% feature that needs to be prioritized for all types of medium (laptops, tablets, and mobile phones) and then you can expect an 80% positive return.

These are the features that are mostly used by your visitors. So it’s completely fine to focus on building this one as this will yield the best results.

Make navigation effortless

To make sure your visitors stay, your site’s navigation has to be simple and user-friendly.

Complicated tabs and options might scare them away, so make sure you keep things simple and easy to comprehend.

This is easily one of the most integral parts of a website building. Thus, you have to make sure you don’t let this one go unnoticed during the planning.

Final Thoughts

To really pin down the workable recipe for a certain website, you have to endure years and years of practice and experimentation — that is if you have the time to spare to learn the ropes.

But if in case you’re not cut to do all the site-building alone by yourself, find the best website designer in the Philippines that will help you realize your ideas.

Talk to one of them now to understand how important it is to keep things simple when it comes to the process of building web design.