Naturally, we all want our website to be unique and to stand-out, but when people scan screens based on past experiences and expectations, visual hierarchy is an important part of website design.
Visitors to your site often decide whether to stay or leave within seconds, so if the information they're expecting to see isn't where they're expecting to see it, they will simply leave your website and try another.
Visual hierarchy refers to the way elements on a webpage are arranged in order of importance, guiding the user’s eye to the most critical information first. Having a good visual hierarchy of your website design not only helps in capturing the user's attention but also improves the overall user experience by making the website easy to navigate. It can influence user behaviour, such as encouraging visitors to click on a call-to-action (CTA) button or engage with your content. And properly executed visual hierarchy can lead to higher conversion rates, longer visit durations, and improved user satisfaction.
So let's explore the power of visual hierarchy and how you can implement it effectively on your website.
Prioritise your content with size and scale
To put it simply, the most important elements on your page should be the largest. This ensures that visitors notice key information first, like your headline, CTA buttons, or featured products.
And if you want to grab visual attention quickly, remember that less is more. You don't need a big paragraph of text in a very large font - that will look overwhelming. Condense the text down, and then scale the font size up to really make your key statement stand out.
Use colour to highlight important elements
Colour is a powerful tool in visual hierarchy. Bright, contrasting colours can make key elements like buttons or headlines stand out, while muted tones can recede into the background. For example, on the Wix website, they put the CTA's in a bright green, making them pop against the background and drawing attention for you to click to 'start creating'.
Remember though - if everything is in a different colour, then nothing stands out. This principle only works if you use one key contrasting colour. For example in the Wix screenshot above, there is another green used on the background, but this is much darker and so doesn't capture attention like the bright green CTA.
Leverage white space for better focus
White space, or negative space, is the empty area around design elements. It might seem like wasted space, but it actually plays a crucial role in focusing the user’s attention on what matters most.
When used correctly, whitespace can help to separate elements to make a design look clearer and demonstrate which elements belong together. Small whitespace in between text can also help improve legibility by again avoiding overcrowding.
And whitespace isn't only for different design elements, it can be used in photography too. Twigs Paper do a great job on their homepage hero of leaving whitespace in the left side of their image to enable typography to overlap with the photo, with the overall aesthetic remaining well balanced and easy to read.
Use alignment to create a clear visual path
Alignment helps create a clean and organised look by ensuring that elements are visually connected and aligned with each other. A well-aligned design guides the user's eye through the content in a logical order, improving the overall user experience.
The easiest way to have perfect alignment is to follow a grid structure in your design. This is a pattern of horizontal and vertical lines to create a series of square or rectangular blocks. You can enable this in both Wix and Squarespace for visibility of the blocks when designing, or set consistent margins across your site and align all content up to the margins. On Wix, you can turn on the gridlines in the 'editor' to snap elements into place. And in Squarespace you can use the layout engine to align content blocks precisely.
For text like descriptions, articles and blog posts, we would always advise left-alignment as this is the most accessible design with it being the easiest to read. For titles, stand-out quotes or sentences you're using to break up a page, centre-alignment could be best. And we'd only recommend using right-alignment when writing in languages that follow the right-to-left method, like Arabic.
Let's add visual hierarchy to your website design
Implementing visual hierarchy on your website is essential for guiding your users' actions and improving their overall experience. If you need help enhancing your website's visual hierarchy, then we are here to help. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you achieve your website goals.