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What is whitespace? Why is whitespace important in your web design?
If you haven’t been trained in web design, it can seem rather complicated. While there are many skills that can make designing websites easier for you, there are some things that even newbies can learn to create a website that functions well and provides a good user experience.
Continue reading this article to learn what whitespace is as well as best practices when you’re designing your website.
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Whitespace Is Your Friend
When you look at your website, you’re likely thinking you need to pack it as full as possible. If you’re monetizing with ads, you want to fill every blank space with advertisements from paying clients. If you’re trying to get people to spend money on a product or service, you want to place promo graphics and calls to action everywhere.
One company that knows how to use whitespace like a pro is Apple. Apple knows where to put their stunning graphics and where they should leave them out. When you’re scrolling through their pages, they leave you wondering what’s coming with the next scroll.
When you can get your website visitors to want to keep scrolling — that’s a win. And that’s where whitespace comes in!
How Does Whitespace Help Your Website Design
You might be seeing why whitespace is a must for your website already, but just in case you aren’t, let’s go over some of the most important reasons.
Helps With Content Structure
When you use whitespace properly, it helps the visitor’s eye flow from one important element to the next. Instead of having to push themselves through the site, they are pulled through the site with the well thought out design.
Allows for Easier to Read Text
Many times, important text elements are difficult to read because of too much noise on the website. Whitespace allows your text to do its job to communicate your message to your website visitors.
Don’t go overboard and add too much space in between text or it can be confusing where one word starts and another word ends.
Makes Your Design Look Luxurious
Whitespace isn’t just for creating a good user experience. Whitespace can also make your website look luxurious and beautiful. If you look at most websites that sell high-end products, you’ll notice there is a great deal of whitespace on their sites.
Helps With Site Organization
The way your website is organized has a great deal to do with user experience. If you don’t pay attention to the way you’re organizing your website, it is likely difficult to navigate and people will leave your site after reading one or two pages. And they likely didn’t take any actions you wanted them to take.
The human eye perceives the relationship of certain objects differently depending on their proximity.
Gives You Freedom
One of the things we should note is that whitespace doesn’t have to be white. You can use any color or leave out color in the negative space. Whitespace can even be a pattern, textured background or an image in the background of the site.
If you’re designing a long page, you might use different colors, patterns or images to create segments on the page.
Draws Focus & Emphasizes
If your website is cluttered, your visitors are looking at everything and nothing at the same time. When there is too much information, too many graphics, and too many messages, your visitors are on overload.
What are they supposed to be looking at? What are they supposed to be doing? What is your goal with the website?
Your visitors certainly don’t know and if your website is lacking whitespace, you might not have a clearly defined goal for that page either.
The more whitespace you leave around any given object, the more likely people are to read it or click on it. Whitespace lets people know when something is important so use it wisely.
Using Whitespace In Your Web Design
Now that you have some good ideas on how to use whitespace, how is it going to fit into your web design? If you already have a web design, you may look at it and think you need to start all over again.
Instead of getting rid of everything on your current website, see if there are elements you can salvage so you don’t feel like you’re starting out from square one. Some parts of your site might just need a little reduction of content or graphics to really pop.
If you don’t have a website yet, map out your web design before you get started. You might even want to draw it out on paper to see how the elements are going to look and how you can use white space to bring the page together and give it a nice flow.
Keep your brand image in mind and the goal for each web page as you’re creating your design for the best results.
What Is Whitespace? – Now You Know
Now you have the answer to your question, “What is whitespace?” I’ve also given you some newbie and pro tips on how to make your website look and function its best.
Still feeling overwhelmed with the thought of designing your own website or logo? I’ve got good news for you. You don’t have to do it alone.
I have helped many businesses create professional websites that help them get the leads and conversions they need. You can be next. Contact me today to get started.
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