Guide your visitors with clean visual design
A site that's easy on the eyes is easy on your visitors

On the most successful web sites, visitors can easily find the information they're looking for. This is accomplished, in part, by using clean visual design.

Web site visual design includes all the elements you see on a site—text (words, phrases, paragraphs), graphic items (photos, illustrations, backgrounds, lines, colors), type styles (fonts, sizes, colors), and page layout (page sections, element size, positioning, composition).

Clean visual design comes from the careful balance of these elements with the actual content your web site visitors are looking for. The goal is to visually guide your visitors' attention to the information and features they need without unnecessary visually 'noise' and distractions. Clean design helps people easily use a web site and it presents a professional image for the business.

Without clean design, it's more difficult for a visitor to focus their attention and decide what to do next. As a result, they can feel uncomfortable and be hesitant to explore the site further.

Tips:

• Strive to use a simple design structure and minimize the number of visual elements on the home page. The goal is to visually make it very easy for a visitor to decide what to click and where to go next. If an element—a graphic, line, word, section, color—doesn’t support that goal, it may not belong on the page.
   
• De-emphasize items that don’t help visitors view the page content. Such items could include decorative graphics, text, ads, or links to other sites. Make those items smaller, use a more subtle color, or simply remove them.
   
• Experiment with element sizes--reduce or enlarge photos, illustrations, or other graphical elements. At what size to they add visual interest while not drawing too much attention to themselves and overpowering the actual page content or site features.
   
• Use bolder or brighter headings to draw more attention to the information content sections on the page.