Keeping your web design clean is for more than just aesthetics. If your site is cluttered, it becomes difficult to use and find information. It can also impact your search engine optimization and load times, especially on mobile platforms. The main reason to keep your site clean, especially as a startup business, is to acquire and maintain customers. Without a properly designed website, getting customers to notice you will instantly kill your startup. Use the following tips to keep your business from stopping before it starts.

A clean site is important to acquire and maintain customers

1. Clutter - The more information you present upfront to customers, the harder it is for them to figure out where to go to find something. Information overload is not something you want for your users. If you have a lot of information, keep it simple up front, and categorize things to make it easier for your customers to narrow down.

2. Graphics - Consider using graphics to represent some of your categories to help break up the site and give it more visual appeal. Select the categories you want to have seen most to represent with graphics, as these will most likely draw more visitors. Keep your graphics consistently designed throughout your site; otherwise, it looks like you just pieced your site together.

3. Search - You may also consider adding a search feature if you really have that much information. There are many third-party search services available. Many web design platforms offer some search integration, and Google offers a site search function that can easily be implemented.

4. Menus - Menus can get cluttered, also. Don’t just shove everything in a menu and think your site is now user-friendly. Rolling over a menu and seeing 15-20 items is as bad as seeing them upfront. The key here is ensuring you are putting what you need on your site and eliminating what you don’t. As a fledgling company, you probably don’t want to put all your ideas out there anyway. Keep your website users on a need-to-know basis. If you aren’t ready to talk about a product yet, then your users don’t need to know.

5. SEO -Believe it or not, search engines like clean design as well. The more cluttered your site, the harder it is to index it properly because there is too much information. Search engines like to be able to categorize individual pages for certain things. If you have a page that is about everything, then there is no way to categorize. Keep your information on each page limited, so your site can be indexed properly. It is important to know what you are doing here because if you aren’t in the top 10 of search results, you probably don’t exist to most users. If you can’t figure it out, start looking for professional help.

Anything that makes a desktop website cluttered applies double for mobile

6. Mobile - One more area to consider when designing your clean site is mobile. Browsing the web on a mobile device can be extremely difficult if a site is not mobile-friendly, turning off users and sending them to your competition. This doesn’t mean you have to build a special version of your site for mobile, but you need to keep it in mind with your design. Make your menus easy to tap on using a touchscreen, even though you aren’t specifically building for a mobile device. Keep the other clutter-free tips in mind when building for mobile. Anything that makes a desktop website cluttered applies double for mobile. Ensure any designer you hire is proficient at designing desktop and mobile web experiences.

7. Color - Color schemes need to be kept simple. A white background is great for a clean design and makes colors pop. Using black is harder to design, but it can be designed nicely. Look for great color combinations on other websites, or try a color tool such as Kuler to help you find just the right combination. Remember that the default color for links on the web is blue, and it can be hard to see this with darker colors.

8. Fonts - To make a site look clean, choose a really nice font. Sans serif fonts usually have a very clean look, but your color scheme will also affect which typeface looks best. Default HTML font choices are limited, so I suggest using a service like Typekit to allow us to use a much wider range of fonts.

9. Pictures - If you can incorporate pictures into your website, do it, but make sure they are very high resolution and complement the website, especially for a big picture that you are using for a background or slideshow on the front page. Pictures are great for grabbing attention. Consider them to be like a headline of a newspaper. It should grab the eye, but it’s not the main content, it just gives readers a teaser to get them to read the rest.

10. Go Pro - For a startup company, there is nothing more important than having a website that identifies you and can acquire and maintain your customers. In today’s startup climate, developing fast, user and multi-device-friendly websites are critical. If you are wondering where to spend your scarce startup capital, consider using a company like Cartisien Interactive that can make your design stand out amongst the other web companies in the Valley competing for your customers. Having experts in your corner is the best way to ensure your customers will keep returning. Remember, when it comes to web design, the mantra is to “keep it simple”, because if you don’t, you’ll never be able to keep it clean.