If you don’t have enough white space on your website, you are wasting your design. There are significant reasons for ensuring that you have white space. From leading the visitor’s eye to what you want them to see to helping the overall design look good, consider the following reasons you need to unclutter your site.
Emphasize Important Elements
Image via Flickr by Johnny does
What is the most important thing on your landing page? Is it the text, the images, or something a little more specific? No matter what is most important, make sure that it is surrounded by white space. This will help emphasize that this is an important element. If you have an image that is extremely important, don’t make the image larger; instead, increase the white space around it to emphasize the importance.
Draw the Eye
Image via Flickr by Nanagyei
You know exactly what order you want customers to look at things when they come to your site. Help draw the eye exactly where you want it with the use of white space. The human eye is drawn to white space and what it surrounds. You can guide a customer’s eyes simply by increasing or decreasing the amount of white space around specific elements of your site. This can help you guide the eye exactly where you want it to go.
Scanning is Necessary
Image via Flickr by Jayel Aheram
When you go to a website, do you look over every piece carefully before deciding if you are going to stay on the site or not? Most people don’t. We are impatient creatures and you can see this best online. A potential customer will look at your site and will leave if they don’t find what they want in a very short amount of time. Making your site easy to scan is crucial to retain visitors.
Get Rid of Confusion
Image via Flickr by See-ming Lee 李思明 SML
When you have too much information crammed on your site, it is going to get confusing. No one likes to feel confused and if you have too much in a small space, your customers are likely to leave. Help your customers better understand your website, your goals, and all the information they need by getting rid of clutter. Cut down on unnecessary information, and make sure that text boxes, images, etc. all have enough white space to become easy to view and understand.
Set the Tone
Image via Flickr by Ken_ts
What do you want to say with your website? Did you know that you can set the tone of your site with proper white space? You can show information, lightheartedness, business, casual, and more all with the way you use white space in your design. Openness, freshness, and airiness are frequently the ideas when a lot of white space is used. With little white space, the entire design feels more cramped and closed off.
Many new designers are scared of using white space. However, if you want your site to look professional and get good traffic, it is important to make sure you incorporate white space in your design. Keep your customers comfortable and on your site with a great design.
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By Jon Correll
One of the things you can do in conjunction with this is alternate elements in the layout. Apple does an excellent job of doing this while using white space.
Agreed, William – although another good example is your home page! Excellent use of white space around your headlines and bullet points.