There are simple tips you can use to improve the appearance of your website without having to completely redo it. In the next three weeks, we will cover 3 specific tips during each weekly webinar. Today we will take a look at the overall feel of a website: Colors + Space + Organization.

=1= Color Scheme:

Colors can absolutely create a mood, send a clear message and engage your audience. In 2016, we have seen more and more pastel and lighter colors on newly designed websites. The reason is that computer screens are becoming clearer and better therefore enabling the using of lighter color palettes.

It is without saying that you should use your brand’s colors on your site. If you have changed your logo or colors recently, make sure it is reflected on your website. Changing colors through an entire website is easy to do so the expense from your web designer should be minimal and the changes could make a great difference.

It is common for site owners to want a blue site if their logo is blue. You need to rethink this type of design. It is quite old school and introducing secondary colors on your site is a great way to make the site more beautiful, vibrant and interesting.

Let’s say your logo is Hunter Green (old school color from the time when printers only offer 6 colors to choose from for your business cards), you may want to add a brighter green and even an orange color to give your site some vibrancy.

=2= White space:

Trying to cramp up every piece of information about your company and services onto each page is not only a poor design decision but can be a turn off for many visitors. Your visitors need space in between sections to clearly understand where one starts and finishes. It is also much easier for them to read the copy of your pages if there is white space (could be a light color background too though pure white works great every time). To do that, your website designer can simply add padding between titles and paragraphs, sections, images and so forth.

Even increasing the line height can make a huge improvement on the readability of your textual content.

In the “old days”, we wanted every content to be above the fold which meant that a visitor would not need to scroll. Now that the majority of your visitors use a mobile device, scrolling is just normal and expected.  Having to scroll on a regular desktop (including a touch screen) is absolutely acceptable and no one would think less of your website because of it. You are better off with a web page with nice airy white space and “breathing room” than a condensed, cramped and busy website.

=3= Organization:

Of course your most important content should be the most accessible. Organizing in order of importance what you want your visitors to see first takes planning. Once you have a plan, organize both your content and images to support your plan. The flow of the pages and of the content within each page should be smooth and natural. It should guide without effort your visitors to where you want them to end up, may it be your contact form, your shopping cart or other page.

Visually the pages need to feel organized. That can be done by aligning text or titles, adding some structure to the sections and other methods.

As you can see these three tips are easy to apply to your website without having to re-code it entirely. It means that your site can be improved quickly and with a small budget. If you have any questions about today’s topic, please contact us at 707-794-9999 (Pacific Standard Time).