Minimalist and clean websites are The Thing of the digital present and will be The Thing of the digital future. Businesses and entrepreneurs will have to change the way in which their websites are laid out and designed. In this post we’ll run through the benefits of minimalist design.

As you know, minimalism is not just limited to website design. You might be thinking of such things like traditional Japanese culture, IKEA furniture design, and some types of beautiful architecture.

Whatever minimalist concept that springs to mind for you, they all adopt the same ‘less is more’ principle. 

Benefits of Minimalist Design

Site Load Times

Minimal websites will ultimately have a much better loading time compared with websites that are filled with clutter. They have less imagery and graphic work within the content, and therefore a smaller web page size.

User Experience

This improves the user experience as well as the website’s bounce rate. The bounce rate is the percentage of users that are leaving your site after just viewing one page and not clicking on to any other page, or in any way interacting with the site. So, the higher the bounce rate for your website, the worse it is.

What do site load times have anything to do with user experience? Well think about it ... how many times have you left a website without interacting with it in any way because it was loading way too slowly?

Site load times and user experience go hand in hand. The less there is on the website’s pages, the less time the site will need to load up. Here are some stats …

The statistics show that there is a correlation between a page’s loading time and the bounce rate.

The less time your website takes to load, the better the chance that your visitor will not become frustrated, and will choose to stay.

Further Benefits

So why is having a simple and clean website layout going to have wonderful benefits for your business? 

By doing so, you will only include content and elements of the website that are truly necessary, and that when your prospective client sees this content will want to take things further with your business.

They will not be distracted by any other surrounding imagery, typography or graphics, which do not provide a clear purpose to your end site goal(s).

By the way, our free 10 page workbook walks you through the basics and fundamentals of minimalist website design. As you read through the workbook, you will find that the main thing emphasised is to reduce as much unnecessary clutter as possible.

Clock is Ticking

Users are impatient, and want to take in information, fast. The need for faster websites is becoming more and more prevalent now, and will continue to do so in the future.

It is not just a page’s loading time that can have an impact on user experience, but also the quantity and quality of the site’s content. 

You will no doubt want to use images on your website’s homepage (as an example). Regardless of what industry you belong to, you want to choose just 1-5 images/photographs of your best work, or of the best quality from a selection that you may have.

Do not clutter the surrounding space with any other distractions, such as other images or graphics, which takes the focus away from the main spotlight. You do not want your visitors straying from your best content and eyes focusing elsewhere, otherwise you risk a potential client losing interest in the website and therefore the business.

Minimal Design = Better user experience

It may be easy enough for us to say that a website should contain less content because of the ‘less is more’ principle. However, it is important to decide what is your quality content, and then apply this to the website pages. Only then does a minimal website become truly effective. 

As users become more and more shifted towards a digital world (in 2020, more than ever), the experience which you create must be a good one. Just as you would do, for customers in a physical shopping mall, retail store or a cafe. It is the experience more than anything that will be remembered by your site visitors.

We have written a whole other blog post on the psychology of choice, and it explains that although people generally want more choices as a preference, what they do not realise is that this will lead to more confusion and distraction when it comes to actually making a final decision. You do not want to risk this for your valuable business because it will mean users leave your website without engaging with you in any way.

Examples

Huge businesses such as Google, Apple, Tesla and Whatsapp have created such impactful yet clean website layouts as shown below. The image that Tesla have chosen below on their homepage, is the focal point with no surrounding content to distract the visitor.

Digital Business

You do not need to be a digital or online business to want to put proper thought into your website. The world as we know it in 2020, has signified how important it is to stay online and make sure that any business thrives through its website.

This demand to stay online will only increase in the future, with most businesses looking to make or improve their email lists, sell products online, offer training courses online, grow digital communities and much more!

Mobile Optimisation

More and more visitors are accessing, or will access your website through their mobile phones. Minimalist sites with their smaller sized pages, will perform much better on mobiles and tablets, and so are much easier to optimise.

2020 data shows that in the UK alone, the internet is accessed by 60% mobile phone users, with laptop users coming in next at only 16%. Now that's a big difference. This figure has been increasing since 2015, which only shows an upward usage trend for mobile phones.

Mobile users are even less patient than those visitors browsing from laptops. Platforms like Squarespace make a designer’s life much easier, because you’re able to view quite quickly whether or not a particular page will still be effective and optimised on a mobile phone. 

The Takeaway 

• User experience is a crucial aspect of good website design.

• Minimalist website design is key to ensuring a good user experience.

• Minimalist websites offer faster loading times and a cleaner layout, therefore improving the site’s bounce rate.

• The demand for better user experience is increasing in a more competitive online world.

Pick up your free 10 page minimalist web design strategy workbook below.