4 Ways to Improve the Visual Hierarchy of Your Site and Win Business
Visual hierarchy is an important website design factor for an eCommerce business. It refers to the way you structure your layout and design to emphasize the starting point of the user’s experience, and to create an optimized navigation flow.
Having critical design elements on your site pages is of little use if you don’t organize them effectively. The following is a look at some key strategies to improve visual hierarchy so you can convert more visitors into customers.
Use Powerful Color Combinations
It is important to understand color psychology, which helps set the tone or mood for your customer’s experience. Equally important in eCommerce is awareness of the ways in which certain color combinations enhance or take away from your visual hierarchy.
Contrasting colors capture attention and are useful in guiding a visitor’s eyes naturally toward the elements you want to emphasize. Addressing specific color combinations here is a bit cumbersome, but there are some great resources from places like Content Creator App, which offer insights on how to develop a great two or three color design scheme.
Emphasize with Color and Size
Emphasis is a visual design element aimed at establishing a starting point for a user experience. You can create emphasis in a web page design with color, size or both.
For instance, if you have a dark background on a page with a single bright item in the forefront, a person’s eyes are drawn toward that bright element. If you have multiple items on a page for a user to explore, making one item larger is also beneficial in establishing the starting point as well.
Establish the Flow of Your Story
Order or rhythm are design elements which establish the movement of a user as he progresses from one element on a page to the next.
Think of the key elements on a typical eCommerce product landing page. These might include a product photo, description, specifications, reviews and testimonials. Often, a high-quality image is the starting point to earn interest and attention. In the United States, people tend to scan web pages in an F-pattern or Z-pattern, according to the Nielsen Norman group. These patterns are also common in many other countries, but there is some variance in cultures with different reading behaviors.
Use Appropriate White Space
Think of white space as the backdrop for your design. Just like an artist needs a canvas on which to place his work, so too does a web page creator.
Appropriate white space is necessary to drive a visitor’s eyes toward the critical elements you want them to experience. If you crowd content and images together, it can overwhelm a reader and cause them to exit the page.
Conclusion
These are some of the most effective approaches eSellers can take to optimize the visual hierarchy on web pages. In a traditional setting, product packaging plays a role in purchase designs. Quality visualization similarly attracts visitor attention and contributes to the progression toward a purchase.