A poorly-designed website leaves a bad taste in the mouths of prospective customers. To turn one-time visitors of your homepage into regular users who interact with your content and explore your offering, you need to peak their interest. Your goal is to create a trustworthy website with a simple layout. Here is how well-established companies with high-dollar budgets do it.
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WowEssays.com
Every now and then students rush to the Web with a simple yet forceful request “Where can I find essay writer free resources?” Imagine that you are a learner whose paper is due tomorrow. What to expect from an essay writing website? Let’s take a look at the homepage of one of the biggest essay database in the market – WowEssays.com. The design aesthetic of the page revolves around large areas of negative space or whitespace. The purposeful implementation of the visual design element allows shaping a user’s experience and honing in their attention toward the centralized message. Other design components of the page reinforce this approach: vivid buttons suffuse otherwise plain website with color, simple blocks of subjects and topics enhance the user experience, subtle shades of blue create a 3D effect. Less becomes more.
The resource has set a precedent of seamless design in higher education websites. With a single-minded focus on clean layout and striking visuals, the page is dominated by colorful photos of students partaking in miscellaneous academic activities. To fuel a passion for exploration, the home page is broken up by simple icons. Clearly, the page is rather busy. However, it doesn’t detract from the overall navigability of the website.
The page showcasing the university’s art programs is nothing if not artsy. One doesn’t have to be an Arts major to appreciate a neat collage of videos and photos with a playful hover feature. The page offers its visitors a taste of the creative expression of Stanford’s students. By throwing everything at first-timers at once, the page helps to communicate the multitude of choices available to individuals enrolled in the university.
The homepage encourages its visitors to explore the website’s content by deliberately placing engaging images slightly below the fold. The visible presence of the scrollbar serves as a subtle clue to take a step further and learn more about the graduate program offered by the school. Unobtrusive featured articles inform visitors about upcoming events and latest news, without muddying the page’s design with excessive text. The noticeable breadcrumbs allow getting around the website simply and easily.
The website is a great example of how to make the full use of scrolling to showcase the most prominent sections of the page. The design is dominated by pictures tinged with shades of blue, purple, and green that create balance and harmony. The images are extremely effective at connecting with the target audience and providing the website with an uncluttered look. A simple animation helps to communicate the university’s motto: “Be more, know more, and do more.”
A background video is a powerful visual instrument instantly providing visitors with a glimpse of the company’s offering. Strategically placed above the fold, it grabs and holds students’ attention at just the right time. To increases the visitors’ engagement, bold colors spread across the browser window, thereby making the text more eye-catching. The use of the contrasting sans serif typeface also helps to ensure that the company’s message cannot be missed.
The grid-based layout easily creates order among disparate elements of the page. The graphics language of the website is instantly understood by users with a minimum degree of Web sophistication. The neat image mosaic allows elevating the page’s content to its aesthetic extreme while also adding maximum functionality. Thus, content and the image grid become inseparable. The horizontal navigation enhances the usability of the website and allows its visitors to look at the visual canvas differently.
Look no further for a captivating web design. The beautifully curated page is as much an art as it is a functional experience. The navigational cues are scattered across a three-dimensional representation of the institution, which is prominently displayed above the fold. The key points of interest for the visitors are also duplicated below the fold in the form of pictures with subtle hover effects.
Right from the get-go, the attention-grabbing imagery with definitive edges draws the visitor in. Instead of making users wonder what the university has to offer, the page goes straight to the conversion by delivering them key pieces of information: view of campus, fields of study, and testimonials. A unique palette of tones and colors invites future students to explore the website and access pages they need.
The solid layout design of the website easily renders itself to navigation and provides a consistent user experience. The layout of the page makes use of the Golden Ratio. Thus, the rectangular icons of aesthetically-pleasing proportions are distributed evenly in the calm and focused space of the page. Students are gently nudged to action by elegant CTA buttons that do not detract from the overall user experience.