Many novice designers made the mistake of making their designs overly busy and complex, trying to fill every corner of the page with colour and fancy objects. They think that a design which looks very busy will look more impressive to the user.

However the opposite is true. White space is incredibly important when designing a website. It is very important to ensure that there is enough white space within the design to allow a user to comfortably absorb the information which is being presented on the website. Rather than creating a web design that is overly cluttered, remember the “less is more” approach.

Present your information to the user in small, neat, bite-size chunks that they will be interesting and we’ll keep them on the website for a number of minutes.

You’ll find that in doing this that you will have a much better response from the visitors to your website. You’ll hold their attention for longer, and you will convert more visitors into paying customers by using this approach.

Studies have shown that when a user visits a new website, they usually take about 10 seconds to decide if they are interested in staying on the site longer to learn more, or decide to leave and go somewhere else. This means that you literally have just 10 seconds to get the user excited enough, and to make them believe that your site is the more useful than everyone else.

If the website’s design is too busy, overly cluttered, or filled with unnecessary flashy graphics, the user will find it more difficult to find the information they need. They’ll get bored quickly, or will assume that the site is being run my an amateur and they will quickly decide to go elsewhere. If this is the case then you’re literally sending people to your competitors web sites because of the poor quality of your design.

From the moment a user gets to your site, the entire design should be geared towards making them want to stay longer. This means that the initial content, the visual design, and everything else they’re exposed to when they first get to your site should make them interested to learn more. The longer you’re able to keep someone on your site, the more likely they are to trust spending their hard earned money with you.

Your website always needs to look attractive and professional. Don’t make the mistake of trying to include all your information immediately, and bombard your visitors so much that they lose interest and leave altogether.