Design

For businesses, a website and its design are as important as their front door, if not more so. A web design that involves the best website trends of 2022, including clean minimalism, reflects the company and its capabilities.

A website that’s hard to use or looks dated will send customers away, but web design with user experience in mind and the latest minimalism ideas incorporated will attract attention for all the right reasons.

What Is Minimalism?

Minimalism is a term that’s been bandied about in recent years, but what does it really mean?

Minimalism means less is more in interior design, art, and lifestyle.

Clean lines shine in minimalist art, and minimalism in interior design features an absence of clutter. Minimalism in lifestyle means living with fewer items of excellent quality.

Minimalism in web design is clean and uncluttered, easy to read, and well-organized. Minimalism reflects the trends of 2022 and brings visitors to websites a more positive user experience.

The Minimalism movement started in the post-World War II period of the 1950s. Western art and design in the 1950s through the 1960s and into the 1970s featured clean lines and a modern look that defined the era.

Today, minimalism is seeing a revival in everything from fashion to web design. Minimalism reflects a simple lifestyle that includes the best quality necessities and nothing that’s not needed.

Minimalism in design offers a fresh and effective look for 2022 and beyond.

What Is Minimalist Website Design?

Minimalist web design incorporates those minimalism principles. In many ways, minimalist web design is classic, and true classics never go out of style.

Current trends emphasize clean, uncluttered, and uncomplicated layouts. Minimalist web design offers an easy and convenient user experience and loads faster, too.

The simplicity of minimalist design may lead you to believe that thought isn’t required, but nothing could be further from the truth.

A minimalist web design must be well-organized and well-thought-out by the design team. The design process must include collaboration among members of the design team.

The design elements and design choices must be considered for compatibility so they can be powerful tools for users.

Minimalist graphic designs make the user experience positive and productive, with faster loading times. This minimalist design trend will continue to be popular because of its performance and timeless design.

10 Minimalist Web Design Tips for 2022

Incorporating minimalism in web design is easier if design teams first consider some of the principle design trends in 2022 and beyond.

Less Is More

Uncluttered, clean, and simple design is a hallmark of all minimalist designs, including graphic designs for websites and webpages. Too many icons and buttons for users to click on can be overwhelming and confusing for users. This can make web designs with an unattractive busy look.

With minimalism, less is more. The users’ eyes get a break when viewing a minimalist website’s white space and are directed to the central designs of the website. Minimalism offers everything needed and nothing that’s not.

Apply Minimalism to Your Images Too

Simplistic, elegant, minimalist design should continue to the images included in your web design.

Graphic designs should be clean and easy to interpret, with legible writing and without complicated serifs. Photography should be well-thought-out, showing subjects in a powerful but simple way that’s easy for website users to understand.

Always Keep Usability in Mind

The ultimate goal of all web design should be usability and user experience. The best web designs are the ones that are not only attractive but also easy to use. Follow these graphic design tips to use the best of 2022’s minimalist trends in web design.

Focus on the Content

Minimalism principles should extend to the content of the website. Less can be more when it comes to text for a minimalist website. Give users the information they need with the concise language they can easily understand.

Fewer well-considered words will make your website elegant, effective, and minimalist. Users will have a clearer understanding of the information provided.

Use Your White Space Wisely

The white space of your website should frame and accent the included icons. It can be hard to find the information needed on a cluttered website.

Not so in a minimalist website – this design style uses white space to make the graphic designs included stand out even more. This type of flat design can be timeless and effective as a powerful tool for communication.

Don’t Be Afraid of a Dark Background

Black background with white text and graphic designs can be an elegant example of minimalist web design. Some designers say that black and darker backgrounds give the eye a moment to rest.

These dark backgrounds also let the minimalist graphic designs and images pop for website users. Inversely, white backgrounds can also be effective as a background with brights as well as muted color palettes.

Be Purposeful in Your Design

Minimalist design must be thoroughly considered and well organized, so purposefulness in web design is central to minimalism and user experience.

All parts of minimalist web design must have a purpose and be functional for users and the overall website. A visual element should always have meaning and purpose within the entire design.

Use Only Three Colors

A new 2022 design trend is to use only three colors in designing a website.

These colors don’t always have to be bright primary colors. A minimalist website can also have a complementary color scheme that includes muted color palettes.

Bright or muted, these colors can become signature colors for the company or organization, even leading users to see a certain color and think of that brand and that website.

Different Fonts Can Be Your Friend

While minimalism design should be easy to read, the fonts used can go beyond Helvetica and Calibri. Consider a clean script that can add a creative accent to a minimalist web design. Don’t be afraid to mix fonts in minimalism.

Remember that the fonts should be read easily and fit well into the overall minimalist design. Fonts can also show the personality of the company or organization.

Keep Your Navigation Intuitive

Your website users shouldn’t have to think too hard when finding their way around. In minimalist web design, website navigation should be intuitive for users. Icons should be in places that make sense for website visitors, contributing to a positive user experience.

This responsive design combined with a clean web design will increase functionality and decrease eye strain.

10 Minimalist Web Design Examples

Incorporating minimalism in web design is easier when seeing examples of the best of 2022’s minimalist web design. These 10 websites show how less can be more when designing websites in 2022.

Each offers an excellent user experience while showcasing the brand’s personality and the company’s products and services within the principles of minimalist web design.

HalloBasis

This German design firm lets its creativity shine through. The minimalist design allows the art created by Hallo Basis to take center stage.

Its website serves as a gallery of the design company’s capabilities. HalloBasis uses fonts that are easy to read, bold, minimalist, and part of the website’s overall look. One visit to the HalloBasis website shows minimalist design trends and a gallery of Hallo Basis’ projects.

Jazz FM Romania

Click on Jazz FM Romania’s website, and you see a bold triangular “play” symbol, telling users in a universal language that their website offers music.

The bright yellow background conveys excitement but is balanced by elegant black graphic designs, making these complementary colors. This makes it impossible not to click play to hear the jazz.

Tinker

Photography of the watches Tinker designs takes center stage in this company’s website.

Its minimalist design blends into the photography, which at once shows the watches and conveys a mood.

Tinker’s website is well-designed, so users can quickly go from the home page to shopping. Muted color palettes make viewing the website feel comfortable.

Leen Heyne

An elegant black background with animation showing the Leen Heyne logo being written in white at once shows the style and personality of this jeweler. The website user sees breathtaking photography of Leen Heyne’s jewelry designs from that start.

Leen Heyne’s elegance is reflected in the design, thoughtful creation, and photography, which gives using this website a luxurious feeling. That gives shoppers a first-class experience buying Leen Heyne jewelry online.

We Ain’t Plastic

A user experience engineering firm must have a functional, well-designed website. We Ain’t Plastic uses high contrast, bold design, and concise writing to tell its story.

Neutral but bold background colors and clean design are a few of the modern web design trends this well-designed website reflects. The We Ain’t Plastic website showcases their UX expertise and creativity.

Nua Bikes

Nua Bikes manages to put a lot of information and photography on their minimalist website.

A wide variety of photos gives users a slideshow of Nua Bikes in use, increasing the customer conversion rate for the company. Users can see these bikes in use through eye-catching photography and comfortable color palettes.

Sendamessage.to

A black background makes the bold and innovative design of Sendamessage.to’s minimalist website.

A business that lets its customers send personalized hand gestures as messages, this website features an engaging photo of a fist turning into a thumbs up. The mission and personality of the service shine through the design of this website.

Maaemo

This three-star, Michelin-rated restaurant in Norway uses black and white contrast to add an air of elegance and mystery to its website.

Making reservations on the restaurant website is easy, showing the minimalist design and UX organization. Photos of food and wine aren’t shown, which piques interest since the restaurant is so well known.

Ava

This website highlights the star of the movie “Ex Machina,” an AI robot named Ava.

The black and white typography and interactivity, including portraits of users drawn by Ava, add to compelling and memorable visual effects and clean web design. Fans of the movie can even share these portraits on social media to promote the film.

Symbolset

A bright color block and clean design make the icon font vendor Symbolset’s website a great example of the minimalist design trend.

The flat background and color choices make their subject matter more interesting for users.

Final Thoughts

Design trends are constantly evolving and changing. Modern minimalist web designs, including graphic designs, complementary colors, and intuitive navigation, are timeless since they load quickly, have high conversion rates that turn visitors into customers, and provide excellent user experiences.

Not only are minimalist designs on-trend – showing up everywhere from fashion capsules to farmhouse home furnishings – for websites, but they also make sense. Minimalist web designs don’t create eye strain or confusion for users. They’re functional, and they load quickly. This keeps users happy and not visiting competing websites.

As you can see, creating a minimalist web design takes more thought than one that is more cluttered.

The organization is essential in minimalism, as is color choice, writing, photography, and user experience design. Collaboration among design team members is required to make all the parts of the website design function well together.

Modern web design trends, including clean design and minimalism, will create a positive user experience, the best first impression that every company or organization wants to make with their website.

The best design trends will let the website show an organization’s personality and its products and services in the best light.

How using a website feels is a reflection of a business. A website that loads quickly and is easy to use and attractive is the best first impression online a company could have. Modern minimalist design trends can create positive online user experiences essential to successful web design for 2022 and beyond.

The post 10 Minimalism Web Design Tips for 2022 appeared first on noupe.

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Feb/22

How to Create a User Journey That Users Will Actually Follow

by Irina Linnik - Digital Specialist under Design, Feeds, Web Design

Have you ever wondered why users do not complete certain actions on your website or why you don’t see enough conversions? The reason might be a need for a website redesign – or a poorly designed user journey.

A user journey maps out all steps that a user takes when interacting with your software product. Its ultimate goal is to naturally lead the user towards completing a certain goal and this is why the user journey design is so important. Unfortunately, many business owners do not take it seriously enough which results in low conversions and low user engagement. So how do you craft an engaging and intuitive user journey? This article aims to shed light on the issue.

What exactly is a user journey and why does it matter so much?

As already stated, a user journey is a path that a user takes when interacting with a product in order to reach a specific goal. This process starts from the first point of interaction (i.e. launching an app) and includes all actions that a user performs (browsing, interacting, selecting categories, etc.) until the goal is complete.

Think of a user journey as a map that shows how exactly a user behaves when interacting with a product. Of course, you can never predict one’s behavior with 100% accuracy but by studying your target audience, you can get a pretty solid understanding of what your users want and how they expect to achieve it.

So why is user journey design so important? Here are the core reasons:

A good user journey boosts user experience: if a product has intuitive navigation and does not cause any confusion, users will most likely become more interested and engaged. This, in turn, promotes conversions as they’ll be more motivated to complete them.
A detailed user journey uncovers any blind spots: it may reveal some weak areas in your app’s design that you have not noticed before.
A user journey helps make the app’s design more interactive: for example, by knowing the main touchpoints, you can adjust the design correspondingly.

The main components of a user journey

One of the biggest misconceptions that one can make about a user journey is that it consists of user actions only. This misconception, in turn, leads to poorly designed user journeys that users do not wish to follow.

The first step in creating an intuitive and user-friendly user journey is listing down and understanding its main components. They are:

Your buying persona or your target audience: who is the person that you target?
User interaction: are you mapping out a real or an anticipated interaction?
Journey stages: what steps/stages does a user go through until the goal is reached?
Emotions and thoughts: what emotions does a user feel at each stage of the journey?
Touchpoints: what are the main points of interaction between a user and a product?

Yes, all these things need to be considered when creating a detailed and efficient user journey. Now, let’s dissect the process step by step.

The process of creating a user journey

When you approach a user journey design without a thorough plan, chances are high the user journey will make users stumble on their way. Hence, it is vital to follow the steps that we listed below to make sure you covered all aspects of the user journey creation.

Set your primary goal

The first thing that you need to think about is the goal that you want to achieve. It may be a bigger number of conversions, better user engagement, or an increased number of product downloads. Whatever your goal is, it will be your base for outlining a user journey and you will be building the touchpoints around this goal.

Define your target audience

The next step to take is to actually define who your audience is. Here is where you might face some hidden rocks.

The thing is, you might be having several target audiences and that’s completely fine. Note though, that every target group will need its own unique user journey so make sure to invest time and resources into designing them.

Once you determine whether you want to build a user journey for one or several user groups, you’ll need to create a comprehensive profile of your perfect user. We highly recommend not to rely on your intuition solely and to question real users instead. In this way, you’ll get a solid understanding of their online behavior, their most acute needs, things that motivate them to continue the interaction, and things that set them off.

Define user goals, expectations, and pain points

After you understand who your target users are, it’s time to define what they want from your product, what they expect from it, and what problem the product can help them solve. You will use these findings as a base to make the journey from point A to point B as smooth as possible while also paying attention to users’ emotions during the process. This leads us to the next point.

Identify users’ emotions

Throughout the interaction with your product, users feel a range of emotions, from excitement to frustration. Your task here is to identify (and partially predict), what kind of emotion each step of the user journey evokes.

For example, if your current user journey is not user-friendly and causes confusion, it will leave users frustrated and even angry, thus decreasing their motivation to complete a conversion. By knowing what emotions the stages of a user journey cause, you will be able to adjust these stages and improve the overall experience.

Identify touchpoints

Touchpoints are the points of interaction between a user and your product. Examples include:

Product demos
ustomer support
Feedback
Onboarding process
Loyalty program

As you see, in all these examples a user somehow interacts with your business and gets something in return. Touchpoints play a major role in leading a user towards completing a conversion, so you need to list down all touchpoints in your user journey and analyze how users actually interact with them. Do they interact with all touchpoints and if not, then what might be the reason?

Identify the steps that a user takes

When users interact with your product, they perform a sequence of certain tasks, for example:

Find (they come across your product for the first time)
Explore (users browse your product and check the available features)
Use (they make a decision and proceed to make a conversion)
Follow-up (users leave their feedback on the product).

This is a very simplistic outline of a possible list of user actions but it gives a good idea about the way a user starts and finishes using the product. By knowing these actions, you can correlate them with the following points:

Doing: what does a user do during each step, i.e. during the “find” stage?
Thinking: what does a user think about? It may be “I need to order lunch from the nearest restaurant”, meaning, you need to analyze what kind of an objective a user sets.
Feeling: this directly relates to the emotions that we talked about earlier.
Touchpoints: identify touchpoints that are available to a user at a certain step, i.e. during the “explore” stage.
Opportunities: what kind of opportunities does your product offer to the current user needs? I.e., during the “explore” stage, how can your UI convince the user to proceed?

This may sound overwhelming and it’s not obligatory to perform such deep analysis but it will undoubtedly help you better understand your target audience and how to fulfill their needs in the most effective manner.

Tips to enhance your user journey

To sum up, here are several tips that can help you improve your current or future user journey and ensure users complete it without skipping any steps:

Define and outline all possible obstacles that prevent users from completing a journey and/or interacting with touchpoints;
Define KPIs to achieve: a certain percentage of conversions or a certain number of sales;
Take the journey yourself and see whether it’s as smooth as you think and whether the website design supports it;
Choose the user journey map format that suits your company the best.

And don’t forget to constantly test your ideas with real users and collect their feedback. Last but not least: remember that a user journey is not a constant but rather something that is changing so you’ll need to review it from time to time, especially as your product grows and evolves.

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