The way that a website is crafted and laid out matters more in today’s world than perhaps at any other time. So much thought and energy goes into the creation of a site, but how do you know if you’re approaching it in the right way? How do you know if you’re managing all the different elements correctly? Where should you put important buttons? How much should minimalism play a role in your design principles?
There’s a lot to think about in terms of site design, and a lot we can learn by looking at how certain operators do it well.
Casino Platforms: A Lesson In Minimalism
One kind of site that has a huge amount of content to cover but needs to achieve a minimalist interface? Casinos. They have thousands of games and a myriad of categories to cover, as well as things like payment information, FAQs, player accounts, offers, bonuses, help pages, and a whole lot more… and yet they also need to achieve interfaces that look and feel uncluttered.
How do they approach this?
We can look at a high-end site like Café Casino for an example of good layout. With its big, bold banner and curvy font, it has a clear heading, but that is supported by a selection of clearly labeled menus beneath. Each helps you quickly and easily find a game category that might suit your needs, allowing you to eliminate others and navigate to the place you want to be with speed.
We see helpful options like “most played” alongside major categories such as slots – it’s clear at a glance that you have plenty of choice. At the same time, the style is highly straightforward, with simple black text on a white background, meaning users won’t feel overwhelmed or daunted by the many options.
This creates a very clean interface that means you can easily find where you want to be. Beneath, you’ve got a selection of the Café Casino games, meaning you get a clear view of what’s available on the site. Here, bright images add interest without giving a cluttered vibe – striking a perfect balance that ensures the homepage feels well-considered.
The interface neatly swerves the risk of being too boring (and therefore unengaging), finding the exact sweet spot that will keep users engaged and ensure they have a myriad of options, without overwhelming them with a barrage of information. It’s not extreme minimalism, but for a category of site that needs to display a multitude of different options, it’s a superb example of how you can do a lot while retaining a clean, easy-to-read, well-organized interface.
Lessons We Learn
So, what can we draw from this that can be used on your site? Well, a few different things.
1. Consider Your Needs
The first thing you have to think about is what information needs to be on display on your site. Create categories and groups, and then consider how many you’ve got and what sort of space you have for displaying them. Should you opt for a drop-down menu or an array of permanently-visible buttons? Drop-downs are more minimalist, but create more work on the part of the user – while permanently-visible buttons tend to be straightforward but create more clutter.
Once you have figured out what the major building blocks of the site are, you can start creating a layout that suits them.
2. Think Consistency
What’s your brand? What are your colors? Look at Café Casino and you’ll see consistency everywhere via their purple-and-orange branding. And that’s not just the case on their actual website: they make use of their colors everywhere. It’s ideal for ensuring folks know instantly which platform they’re interacting with. If you check out any of their social media pages, you’ll see these colors being used creatively and to great effect. Color matters a lot, particularly in branding, so it’s crucial to handle it well across different mediums.
Take this Instagram post, for example. It’s celebrating a big winner, so it branches out into some gold accents (think treasure), but the familiar purple is still the dominant hue, shaping the background and forming the text of the logo. Do we recognize it in an instant? Yes.
You should approach your brand creation with similar consistency. Whether someone’s checking out your website, Facebook page, Instagram, TikTok, or anything else, they should see the same hues being used to create a coherent message.
You might also want to check out some social media management tools and what to look for if this is a big aspect of your branding strategy.
3. Don’t Create Clutter
A good webpage in today’s world is uncluttered. It’s not clamoring to sell you things or popping up with ads or offers every two seconds. People want a calmer, more sophisticated experience than that. We can again draw from Café Casino’s approach here; you are given plenty to look at with the games list, but it’s static and puts the user in control. They choose whether to scroll down to the games list and start exploring, or whether to just navigate to the part of the site they want to use. It’s a calming experience, free from pressure. That’s what makes people want to return.
Take a similar approach with your own site! Let the user breathe. Encourage them to explore the various categories through clarity, not shoving them in the user’s face. Avoid excessive animations, pop-ups, distracting ads. This is the face of your business; you want it to be clean and easy to interact with.