A great cannabis website design is composed of numerous variables. Design principles extend beyond the pretty graphics and into functionality, user experience and copywriting.
Great cannabis website design begins with your user in mind. Who are they and why are they coming to your site? What are they hoping to get out of it?
We measure a site’s effectiveness by looking at Google Analytics number, like whether you have high bounce rates, low time on site, low pages per visit and low conversions. These metrics can tell us how your visitors are experiencing your site and its structure and whether they are engaging in the way you want them to. The only reason we build a site, after all, is for the user.
Design is not just what it looks like + feels like. Design is how it works. -Steve Jobs
Below, we present the top 10 cannabis website design principles that meet our criteria for great design.
1. Purpose
Before any artwork or development commences, we take the time to get clear on the website’s goals and each page’s individual purpose in accomplishing those goals. Are your visitors looking for information or entertainment? Do they need to interact with your business digitally and in what way?
2. Communication
Did you know that the average attention span of a goldfish is 9 seconds, but people – in today’s digital world have been found to lose concentration after only 8 seconds. The amount of information available to us and the speed at which we can access it literally decreases our attention span to that of a goldfish.
People want information quickly and effortlessly. The copywriting must speak simply and clearly. Organize information with headlines and sub headlines for those skimming eyes. And think through the message that your images and words convey. Do they convey your brand story accurately?
3. Typefaces
Generally speaking, sans serif fonts like Proxima Nova (our font!) are easier to read online. Serif fonts have more flourish and decorative finishes that can be hard on the eyes to scan and move quickly.
If your brand doesn’t have font families in place already, you will want to set font guidelines for your website. A rule of thumb is not to go past 3 typefaces. But often, if you choose a clean, modern font, you can use it in both headers and body copy.
4. Color
Design is all about psychology and biology. Think how your eyes take in colors differently. Your emotional state can shift just by looking at intentionally paired colors. Your primary brand colors should be clearly discernible on your site. But since there are many different elements on a page, you may need to develop your color palette further.
Color then becomes a language on your site. What color are all your links? And what about the buttons and call to actions? They should all be consistent throughout your marijuana website design.
And what about your header and footer sections? There are lots of ways color can be expressed on your site. Your brand’s color recipe is unique to you and the message it conveys should ‘feel’ like your brand.
And last but not least, white space or negative space is becoming increasingly important to convey information effectively and to keep people engage. Too much going on and the clutter will cause your viewer to leave.
5. Images
Choosing the right images for your site is crucial to convey your brand personality and purpose. We’ve all seen the typical stock photography of people in suits or a woman at a computer. There are plenty of places to source more creative photos. Check out Pexels, one of our favorite sites for high quality photos that don’t feel stuffy. Cannabis website design images should always be high resolution.
Better yet, we recommend hiring a photographer to shoot for the website. Keep in mind the dimensions you are shooting. Those edge to edge photos you see are much wider than they are tall. So shoot from further away so you can zoom and crop, while still keeping that width. If you have intention of overlaying text, you will need to shoot with that in mind as well. Simple or blurred backgrounds work well for text placement.
Videos do great at capturing peoples attention. So if you can, do invest in videos of you and your team speaking, of testimonials and of your product and process of production. A customer that can see behind a brand’s veil, to the real people running the show, will form a stronger bond with your brand.
6. Navigation
You should know of the 3 click rule: when a user can find exactly what they’re looking for in 3 easy clicks. Site navigation and your site map are part of the initial design strategy. What are the things your visitors are looking for and how can you help them find them easier?
Think separate sections with headings, clickable buttons and photos. Make sure to always make it easy for visitors to get back to the home page or contact you– from anywhere they might find themselves on your site. With all marijuana website design navigation is important.
7. The Grid and the Golden Ratio
Our brains can comprehend proportions quicker than we can put words to them. Many artists have created their work with the Golden Ratio, or the Fibonacci Sequence, in mind.
Whether you want to apply mathematics or a modern, straight grid, be sure to plot out all your sections first. What you want to avoid is having to redesign after realizing you didn’t include an important content block.
Here is Twitter’s page overlaid with the Golden Ratio. This is not a coincidence; the proportions are intentional.
8. Go Mobile
A fleshed-out site on desktop can be too much content to place on mobile. You know those sites that make you scroll and scroll some more, just to get to the bottom of the page on your phone. If a desktop site has a lot of content and an extensive navigation menu, it is a good idea to slim things down for mobile. Just the most important content and buttons for customers to interact with.
Because if it takes your visitor more than 8 seconds to figure out what to do or where to go, chances are you might lose them.
9. Load Time
Optimize your images! This tends to be the culprit of slow loading sites. There are lots of apps on the market these days that can compress your images and still retain quality.
On the development side, combining code into a central CSS or JavaScript file will help reduce HTTP requests. A clean back end with streamlined HTML, CSS, and JavaScript will improve load times tremendously.
Remember, it’s always better to start with good clean code than it is to fix it later.
10. SEO on the Mind
SEO is typically a monthly service offered to help a website improve its search engine rankings. What many don’t realize is that you can do a lot for your site just by building it with SEO in mind.
Perform keyword and competitor research right up front. After you’ve drafted your site map and navigation flow, you will want to apply a top keyword or keyword phrase to each page. The copywriting should focus on that page’s keyword.
Your developer can help you submit your sitemap to Google once complete and help you optimize all the technical back end things like meta descriptions and meta tags.
We hope this list has got you thinking about ways in which to build your new site or improve your existing one with our cannabis design website principles.
Our design and development team is ready to create something amazing for your brand. If you’re ready to take the next step, fill out our Start a Project form.
