The importance of text rich web design
In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, mobile devices have dominated internet usage. Therefore, we cannot ignore the importance and the increasing popularity of minimalism and efficient website design. Designers may be tempted to use bolder, feature-rich design as it seems like the best way of engaging users. However, users today are more attracted to websites with clean and distraction-free designs.
Modern users favour designs focusing on necessary components and shun distracting bells and whistles. Although this may sound counterintuitive, minimalist web design, that focuses on providing useful information to visitors, can offer better usability, higher user engagement, and more aesthetic site appeal.
Impact of Decorative Images on Minimalism Mobile Web Design
Mobile users demand a swift and seamless web experience since they are often on the move and pressed for time. The cautionary advice that “too many decorative images should not be used on mobile” stems from recognizing that these images can disrupt flow and compromise loading times and human attention span. When images lack substantial informational value, their inclusion on a mobile website can be counterproductive.
A recent video by Raluca Budiu, Director of Research at Nielsen Norman Group, the world leader in research-based user experience, analyzed the importance of not using decorative images on mobile websites. According to Raluca Budiu, mobile devices are small and can be carried everywhere. However, their small screens come with limitations for both designers and users. It is difficult for users to simultaneously see all the information on the mobile website. Furthermore, connecting different pieces becomes challenging, and scrolling longer pages makes users give up reading easily.
Decorative images should not be used on mobile, as they lengthen the page and make it load more slowly. Use images only if they add informational value to your page.
Budiu states that images should only be used if they add valuable information to your page. In addition, she said that users may not like mobile websites that have many images for the following reasons:
- Images lengthen the page, forcing the user to scroll more
- Images make the page slower to load
Quoting insights from the video, “Use images only if they add informational value to your page” becomes a guiding principle. Each visual element on the website must serve a purpose: to convey crucial information, enhance comprehension, or evoke a specific emotional response. By adhering to this counsel, designers can ensure that every image plays a meaningful role in the user experience and maintain the less is more web design trend.
Furthermore, she highlighted the importance of informative and value-adding textual content:
People like text more than images on mobile.
Embracing the Simplicity of “Less Is More” Web Design Trend
The “Less is More” website design principle underscores the power of simplicity in crafting compelling mobile experiences. This philosophy encourages designers to prioritize clarity, functionality, and a streamlined interface over unnecessary complexity.
In a thought-provoking piece, previously published here, PP Design urges website owners to ensure website design focuses on users and their points of interest. Users are likely to abandon a website that is slow, clunky, and full of distracting animations, pop-ups or annoying ads and promotions. When cluttered, a website can overwhelm users and dilute the impact of the content. The simplicity of minimalism in web design enhances user engagement. By trimming excess elements and focusing on essential content, a website can communicate its message more effectively, ensuring users quickly find what they need without unnecessary distractions.
PP Design stresses that your website is the face of your business and acts like your business card. Therefore, your visitors expect to get content that caters entirely to their needs. Consequently, it puts them off when encountering pop-ups, block styling, and flashy effects. Designers must prioritize user-friendly interfaces, ensuring visitors can effortlessly navigate the website without getting lost in a maze of unnecessary features.
Our recent blog post further highlights that website design has more to do with structural complexity and coding standards than complex and sophisticated designs. The top five priority points you must deal with when it comes to web design include:
- Navigation: Ensuring navigation is responsive and easy on different screen sizes.
- Accessibility: The website should be super-fast in loading pages irrespective of the content, whether still images, text, or moving images such as animations and videos.
- Security: Your website must be secure, backed up, and regularly updated.
- SEO: When your website is optimized for SEO, the search engines will efficiently index it, and you will get more organic traffic.
- Email deliverability: Ensure your customers are receiving your business emails and they are not ending up in the spam folders.
Finding Harmony between Functionality and Aesthetics in Web Design
In the delicate landscape of mobile web design, finding a balance between functionality and aesthetics is essential. The caution against using too many decorative images and the call for simplicity in web design are not opposing forces but complementary principles. Designers can strike the right balance by judiciously using images that enhance content and embracing a clean, uncluttered design.
Optimizing mobile experiences requires a holistic approach. From the selection of images to the overall design philosophy, every decision should be made with the end user in mind. The goal is not simply to create visually appealing websites but to deliver content in a way that is accessible, efficient, and user-centric. Carefully applied, minimalist principles can help designers make attractive and practical sites with fewer elements, simplifying and improving users’ online interactions. As stated in that article, people don’t “visit” websites anymore – as they used to do in the early days of the internet when everything was new and we all were eager to “discover” new expressions – but go straight to the information they are looking for and then leave. And this is the case for both visitors using their computers or their phones to connect.
In a Wrap
As you can see, effective mobile web design is a delicate balancing act. The caution against decorative images in favour of valuable textual content and the “less is more” philosophy offers important guidance. When these principles converge, designers can create mobile experiences that are visually pleasing and efficient, ensuring that users can access the information they need swiftly and seamlessly.
Fact-check: “People Don’t Spend Much Time Reading Web Pages”