4 Design Hacks to Improve Your Website
Anyone can be a designer. Yes, even you! As a self taught designer I believe it.
This might feel impossible but I know it’s true. Design is just like any other skill.
I’m a self taught web designer who didn’t take any design courses in college.
I’ve used free and paid web design digital resources to improve my design skills and branch out into even more fields like branding.
If you’re learning about web design or want to DIY your site this post will help you do it.
Here are a few design hacks to improve your website.
Use Negative Space Wisely
Have you visited a website where everything was way too close together? Like you’re trapped inside a tiny closet with not enough air?
That’s not how you want people to feel when visiting your website, anxious and looking for the exit. That’s what happens when your design elements, photos and text, are too close together.
On the opposite end have you seen a site where everything was so far apart that you weren’t sure what went together? Did the scroll on the landing page feel really endless? This time everything is too far apart.
Find the Balance
The good news is that finding the right balance with negative space or white space is fairly simple. Finding that perfect amount of space where your eye isn’t overwhelmed with content and everything flows takes some practice.
If you’re using Squarespace you can easily toggle between desktop and mobile mode to see if your pictures, images and text and getting smashed together or are easy to read and understand.
Show The Value
Your website isn’t the place to bury the juicy bits. You want to engage your website visitor right away. If you don’t people might get tired of scrolling and just leave. You don’t want to hide your value proposition.
So how do you show the value of your brand and services? By telling people your story about you, your journey and the transformations you’ve gone through or provided along the way.
People love social proof so if you have rave reviews and testimonials show them off on your homepage!
What can overwhelm people is using too many CTA’s. This stands for Call to Action. Sites that use too many of these feel like they are screaming at you.
Buy Now! Click Here! Look at This!
Choose one CTA per web page as a general rule for guiding people towards your products and services.
Use Bright Colors Thoughtfully
Take this one with a grain of salt and remember this is a suggestion. If you love bright colors use them! This is mostly a suggestion for those who aren’t sure about what colors they want to use.
If you’re starting from square one with colors check out some of the previous posts on branding and learn how many colors your brand should have.
If you want to go more in depth with learning about how to choose colors for your branding this post will help.
The basics of choosing colors is picking a dark color, light color, and an accent color. The most important part of choosing your colors beyond design and aesthetics is contrast.
If your background is white you should have a darker text color and not something like pastel yellow. No one will be able to read anything on your site.
Check Grey Contrast
Just like there are 50 shades of grey, yes I made that joke, some greys are harder to see against black or white.
An important thing to keep in mind for your colors and images is contrast. If two colors are too similar people won’t be able to read your text if they overlap.
An easy fix for text color that is similar to the background color is adding an overlay on top of an image or a shape in a more contrasting color.
Use this website to check the contrast of your gray.
Design Hacks to Improve Your Site
Now that you know how to use negative space to create a cohesive look, show the value right away and check the contrast between your colors your site will look well-designed in no time.
Check out some free web design resources if you’re a DIY web designer.
