Web style guides – a detailed design concept for your website

A unique and instantly recognizable presentation style is basically the be-all and end-all of website design. This usually isn’t too much of an issue though, as most businesses and individuals just work alone on one project. But when it comes to large-scale web projects – such as creating and editing a business website – there’ll often be several teams of employees taking care of design and maintenance. The only solution to a harmonious working relationship and a common focus between different teams is to have a style guide. So what does this term actually refer to? What should be included in it? And how can you create a style guide quickly and easily?

A style guide is known in online marketing as a set of rules for the uniform design of an online presence. Your online presence isn’t just your website – it also accounts for social networks and apps. A style guide works in partnership with corporate design and corporate identity to represent a company. It ensures that the visual identity of a company is immediately recognizable online. Web style guides are necessary to help a company present a united front across all communication channels – be it on social media, in e-mails, via the company website, or through online publications. It offers a guideline for all employees to understand how the business should be represented graphically and textually, so that potential customers can instantly recognize publications.

We’re going to take you through a digital style guide for websites, demonstrating that this is much more than just creating a pretty logo and a company color scheme. In addition to deciding upon the fonts and colors that you’ll use, the style guide also determines image design and the arrangement of elements, while additionally containing information on the tonality of texts. If followed properly, a solid web style guide will provide your website with a uniform presentation on all fronts – even if there are different web designers responsible for different areas of the website.

Those responsible for a company are sooner or later faced with the question of how their website best reflects their company – and how site visitors can instantly spot the company from their website. The answers to these questions are the foundations of the style guide – a document that summarizes design concepts and forms the basis for the design of a website. A style guide is crucial for communicating these design concepts and ideas to a whole team (and in some cases several teams) of web designers, to ensure that an entire web presence has the same feel. The idea behind this is to make a brand instantly recognizable online. As a result, the ideal concept for a website should be one that helps site visitors quickly identify the brand and remember it long after leaving the site.

A uniformly-designed website gives your company a level of professionalism and seriousness. Customers and users are much more likely to feel attracted to your site and typically spend more time on it as well.

When building a good style guide, it’s imperative to think about your website’s target market. To illustrate the importance of this, here’s an example: A funeral director would never use informal language to approach or write to customers. In this industry, using formal and serious language is more befitting the needs of the customer and will offer more sensitivity towards the subject of the exchange. These face-to-face behavioral standards should also be applied to the content of a funeral director’s website: if the aim is to show customers the utmost respect, then this has to be outlined in the style guide. On the other hand, if you’re planning a portal for younger people, it makes sense to talk to them in a more informal style so as to help them feel at ease and comfortable, while adding a level of familiarity and respect to the interaction.

One of the first things to consider before writing your style guide is to make sure your corporate philosophy, otherwise known as corporate identity, matches your target market. To assess this, you’ll need to carry out an extensive analysis: It’s important to define the age, gender, educational background, living situation, and interests of your target group as precisely as possible. This is because you can only ensure your website displays content in a way that resonates with your target audience if you actually get to know them. The style guide should also describe the corporate philosophy as well as the objectives and wording style: What does the company stand for and which words can/should be primarily used on the website in order to convey the company’s ideals to customers and readers?

The more exact and precise that your web style guide is, the more money and time you’ll save in the long run. You should detail the guidelines as closely as possible: Colors should be clearly defined with hex codes, RGB values, and associated mapping, for example. A short description can also be useful to explain why the given color(s) were chosen and the effect that they’re supposed to have on the viewer. It’s also crucial to outline which colors have been chosen for which element. You’ll also need to specify where to place icons, button elements, banners, and logos, as well as determining their colors of course.

All this information means it can sometimes be easier to offer a graphical overview rather than just a descriptive text. This graphic can also contain specific information about column width and line height etc. In doing so, the designer is given direct instructions about how all elements should appear on the finished page. Sizes for images, icons, and logos are also useful.

Font choice, size, and purpose of use should also be defined in your web style guide: how, when, and where should particular fonts be used? A good style guide will also ideally include direct examples for usage (designed to clarify which font should be used for which section, heading size, etc.). It’s also important to include information about line spacing, indentation, and distances between individual page elements.

Both examples here show two different approaches to style guide presentation, though neither is particularly wordy: Good illustrations and short descriptions are the best way to make sure your style guide is clearly understood. Most important of all is maintaining a logical structure: The Boy Scouts of America utilize an effective contents page for their PDF format, while the Mozilla web style guide has a menu structure on the left-hand side that can be used to quickly navigate pages.

Of course, not every company is able to include an effective style guide on their own website, which is why we’ve included the BSA’s PDF style guide to show how you can create a well-structured handbook that could even be given to employees and designers in a physical format. A benefit of this is that it will encourage employees to read and fully absorb the style guide before they start working.

The following table offers a useful summary of the most important points to cover in any good style guide:

Once you’ve created your style guide, your focus has to turn to updating and editing your web presence accordingly. This is the only way to ensure a united front across all communication channels in the long run. A uniformed approach is essential for branding and corporate identity. But this doesn’t mean that the style guide for a company should never be changed. In fact, quite the opposite: You should regularly maintain and update your style guide. Are your designs still current? Is your choice of font still modern? Our Mozilla example shows that logos can change a lot over the course of time – in most cases, this is a necessity for brands to remain modern. Lastly, remember that the tastes of your target group may change, too. So while it’s important for your web presence to remain consistent and true to your pre-defined style guide, you still have to pay attention to changing trends and update your specifications accordingly to make sure your target group doesn’t lose interest in your branding.