Thinking of creating your own graphic designs for your homepage?

First you have to understand the essentials. There are a handful of basic elements that you should know before embarking down the road of design. These elements are usually referred to as the principles of design. Successful designs utilizes all or most of these principles. I will be touching on three of these in order to give a more in depth view on how to use them in a work of art.

Design is essentially creative problem solving. It’s meant to take challenges and translate them visually. When creating design you have to consider the overall user experience and their interaction with your site. Who is the consumer you are trying to sell to? What are their interests? In the case of FlowerManager, it should be flowers. The most important part of design is that it clearly translate the idea you are trying to push. If someone comes to your site and they are confused as to where to go, your commerce conversion rate might suffer. In order to make sure flowers are the focal point on your site, you will use Hierarchy to draw the consumer’s eye to the most important point on your homepage. Such movement can be directed through the use of color, shape, and lines within your feature area. On your feature area, these focal points should be a clear call-to-action and a message telling clients where to go to get flowers on your site.

Emphasis is used to catch the viewer’s attention through different parts of the image. You can place emphasis on size, color, etc. If you have everything be the same size, same color, then it becomes boring to the eye and your consumer will just glaze over it. If you have a very large and colorful call to action it compels them to pay attention to it. The use of white can also be very powerful. It’s why we suggest minimal themes for most of our florists. When you try to say something important you don’t want it to get lost in a clutter. Empty space brings clarity to a message. It reduces noise, creates emphasis, and increases readability.

Having visual weight and Balance on your site is very important. This is where placement, scale, and proximity comes in to play. Things at the top and to the left (in the direction we read) are regarded as important. If holiday categories and necessary occasions are not at the top and not displayed prominently in the left hand navigation, the consumer will not go to that category. If you are relying on the consumer to wade through your occasions drop down to find a holiday category… they won’t. Meanwhile, proximity in your feature area allows the reader to know things are related at just a glance. It’s also important to align and group like elements together to create the best possible chance for a positive conversion rate. Having balance makes your homepage look stable.

Using the principles of design is a dependable way to guarantee that you are creating an effective design and composition on your homepage.