A minimalist website is not a site with nothing on it. It is a site where everything present has earned its place. That distinction matters most in the days before launch, when the temptation is to add one more section, one more badge, one more thing that might just help.
This checklist is the opposite. Ten checks, grouped into themes, to make sure what goes live is clean, quick, readable and usable by everyone who arrives. Most take minutes. The ones that take longer tend to save the most trouble.
Purpose and content
1. Give the site one clear job. Write down, in a single sentence, what the site is for. “Show six projects and make it obvious how to get in touch.” “Explain what the studio does and let someone book a call.” If you cannot settle on one sentence, the homepage will try to do four things and do none of them properly. Keep that sentence somewhere visible and use it to settle design arguments later.
2. Write the words before you style them. Strip the design away and read the copy as plain text, top to bottom. It should still make sense. If it only works because of a large hero image, the words are carrying too little. Break long paragraphs in two, remove adjectives that add nothing, and replace anything vague — “solutions”, “experiences”, “journeys” — with the actual thing you make or do. Good copy makes a simple design look considered; weak copy makes a beautiful design look empty.
Structure and interface
3. Cut the navigation to what people use. Check your analytics, or ask five people which pages they would look for. The main menu should hold those and little else. Five items is a comfortable ceiling. Everything else belongs in the footer: legal pages, archives, older work, the newsletter sign-up. A footer is not a bin, but it is the right place for things only a minority will want.
4. Choose two typefaces and one spacing scale. A display face for headings and a text face for everything else is plenty. If one will do, use one. Then define a small scale and stick to it — perhaps four text sizes and two or three weights. Do the same for space: 8, 16, 32, 64 pixels, and nothing in between. Consistency reads as polish far more reliably than novelty does.
Weight and speed
5. Set a budget before you build. Pick a number for how heavy a typical page is allowed to be, then check it. Under a megabyte for most pages is a reasonable aim to work towards. The exact figure matters less than having one, because a budget turns “should we add this?” into a question with an answer.
6. Treat images, fonts and scripts as the expensive items. These are almost always what makes a site feel slow. In practice:
- Export images at the size they will be displayed, in a modern format, and compress them.
- Set width and height attributes so the layout does not jump while loading.
- Lazy-load anything below the first screen, but never the main image.
- Subset fonts to the characters you actually use, and limit yourself to two or three weights.
- Audit third-party scripts — analytics, chat widgets, embedded video. Each one is a request, a risk and a maintenance job. Remove the ones nobody would miss.
Accessibility and resilience
7. Check contrast and focus states. Body text needs enough contrast to be read comfortably, and grey-on-white is the usual offender. Then tab through every page. Can you see where you are at all times? If the focus outline was removed for looking untidy, put it back, or replace it with something clearer. Focus styles are not decoration; they are how a keyboard user knows where they are.
8. Make the essentials work without extras. Turn JavaScript off and see what breaks. Navigation, reading and getting in touch should all survive. Write alt text that describes an image’s purpose rather than its appearance, use headings in order, label form fields properly, and respect the reduced-motion setting so animations do not run for people who have asked them not to.
The final pass
9. Run the clutter audit. Go through the site and delete anything that fails one simple test: does it help someone do the thing the site is for? Common casualties:
- A carousel with one slide, or five slides nobody watches.
- Autoplaying video with sound, and background video that sits behind the text.
- Pop-ups that appear before anyone has read a word.
- Social icons in the header that lead to dormant accounts.
- “Coming soon” links and placeholder pages.
- Two calls to action competing inside the same block.
- Decorative animation that delays the content.
If you use analytics or cookies, keep the setup as light as you can and take proper advice on what you are required to disclose. A banner that covers the page on every visit is a design failure dressed up as compliance.
10. Test on a real phone, a slow connection and with a second pair of eyes. Emulators lie. Borrow a mid-range Android handset, throttle the connection, and try to complete the main task. Then ask someone who has never seen the site to do it while you watch without helping. Their first ten seconds will tell you more than a month of internal debate. Check the small things too: the 404 page, the contact form, and what the layout does when an image fails to load.
Launch, then keep it minimal
Before you publish, take a full copy of the site and confirm that the domain, email addresses and forms all work as expected. On launch day itself, resist the urge to add. The cleanest sites are not finished on the day they go live; they are protected afterwards.
Set a recurring review — quarterly is enough. Look at the pages nobody visits, the scripts nobody needs and the sections that grew without anyone deciding they should. Keep a short delete list and act on it. Minimalism is not a single decision made once and admired forever; it is a habit of asking what can go, then letting it go.
