It takes only 50 milliseconds for users to form an opinion about your website that determines whether they’ll stay or leave. That decision is 94% design related (“27 Eye-Opening Website Statistics”). The pressure to create a stunningly beautiful website is huge, but the options seem endless. Is it possible to create a website that is beautiful and functional without breaking the budget? Thankfully, although creating a useful and aesthetically pleasing website takes conscious effort and intentionality, the idea should not be daunting. A beautiful website is achievable.
In this blog post you will learn some principles and techniques that will help you beautify your website through design principles and website templates. For more information or a more interactive approach to these topics, you can watch our webinar recording.
What Makes a Website Beautiful?
Creating a beautiful website starts with design. Before applying principles of visual design to templates, logos, images, and layouts, you need to know what these principles are. Five important concepts to keep in mind are contrast, balance, emphasis, variety, and unity.
Contrast is all about how different elements show up next to each other–with websites, thinking about contrast in relation to text is especially important.
Every element of a design, including typography, colors, images, shapes, and patterns, carries visual weight. That’s why you need to think about balance so that you don’t end up with a lopsided website.
Additionally, you should consider emphasis. Which points are especially important? Where should viewers look if they want to hear about your call to action? Different fonts and font sizes, colors, and shapes can all help a specific point stand out.
Finally, variety and unity make a website interesting yet cohesive as a whole. Nearly every element can contribute variety. The trick is to make sure that one common strand runs through the website, pulling everything together into one united whole.
With these five concepts in mind, let’s look at how they can be applied to design templates and logos.
Choosing a Design Template
New templates offer important starting points that can completely transform a website. Five More Talents offers a variety of website templates for churches that follow the five elements of design, using a variety of fonts, images, and sizes that are still part of a cohesive whole.
As you choose a new template, keep in mind that the same template can be used in two totally different websites. For example, the two websites below are both built from our Flavel design template, and yet they are distinctive.
Why Beautify Your Website
As you beautify your website, keep in mind the reason you’re going through all this trouble. The goal is to better serve your users by making their experience as simple and enjoyable as possible, and glorify God through creating something beautiful.
For more information about creating a beautiful website, watch the webinar recording or keep an eye out for future posts about choosing images and page layouts.
