Effective Use of White Space on Landing Pages: Best Practices and Examples (2024)

Source: depositphotos.com

The goal of every landing page is to engage and convert. Whether you are selling a product or a service, you want visitors to spend as much time on your page as possible, to ensure they have an enjoyable experience, and to ultimately inspire them to take action.

How you design your landing pages will play a huge role in accomplishing this goal. Cluttered and confusing pages won’t be nearly as effective as well-organized ones.

White place is an important part of UX and UI design. Here’s what you need to know about using it effectively:

What Is White Space?

White space, also known as negative space, is an empty part of the page. It does not contain any design elements. It is the space between rows and columns, images and videos, and all other textual and visual elements.

White space does not need to be white, despite what the name itself might suggest. You can choose any color, including black. Just note that reading a light text on a dark background may be difficult for some of your visitors.

Four Ways to Use White Space in Your Design

There are four kinds of white space:

• Micro white space: the negative space between small elements on a page, like between words or letters.
• Macro white space: the negative space between the main elements of a page, like between the headline and the text, for example.
• Active white space: the kinds of negative space that you choose to add to a page to impose a certain structure to it. It makes the make look more dynamic, and it can help you organize information better.
• Passive white space: the kind of negative space that occurs naturally, like the space between words. You don’t have to think about it too much.

A well-designed landing page will contain all of these four types. Some you will place on purpose, while the rest will naturally occur as long as you format the page correctly.

Pay special attention to your use of macro and active white space, as this will make the most impact, and it’s totally in your control.

Benefits of Cleverly Using White Space

Without white space, your pages will seem confusing, cluttered, and unprofessional.

White space enhances the readability of your pages. With enough space between each line of text and each letter, you will help your visitors understand and retain the information you are presenting to them.

When a font is too cramped, the eye won’t be able to send clear enough signals to the brain, so readers will quickly give up. If it takes too much effort to understand, they simply won’t bother.

Don’t forget that readers will, on average, spend around 50 seconds or less on a page, so they won’t be reading it in-depth. If they aren’t able to skim and skip, they will click away.

White space will also subtly direct visitors’ gaze where you want it to go. It will make your CTAs pop, it will make all visuals elements stand out, and you can cleverly present leads with information and emotional triggers in a select order.

Without white space, you’d just be bombarding them with words and visuals without any clear order or method. Good design ensures a straightforward user journey, as they scroll down the page.

White space will also help readers stay attentive and focused. There will be nothing to distract them from the copy or visuals you are presenting, so they will have an easier time retaining and computing what they are being shown. In an era of short attention spans, this is incredibly important.

Negative space will also help visitors form connections between elements. The closer two items are, the more connected they will be in the mind of the reader. Elements that are distant from each other will clearly belong in different informational sections.

Finally, white space can help prompt a desired action. If a button is clearly visible and is surrounded by negative space, people are more likely to click on it. When an action button is hidden among lots of text or visual elements, it is more likely to go unnoticed.

How to Effectively Use White Space

Here is how you can use white space with impact and direct the focus and attention of your visitors to the parts of a page you want them to see:

Choose a Neutral Color

One of the most important choices you will need to make regarding white space is whether to actually keep it white. Black font on a white background is what most people find easiest to read. However, it can also appear too dull and uninteresting, so you might want to choose a different color.

Think of the nature of your brand and its personality. What sort of emotional response would you like to spark from your visitors? Apply a bit of color theory, and choose an appropriate hue.

Choosing a neutral color is usually a great way to go. For example, Unita has gone for a subtle gray-blue tone that breaks up the monotony of the page very well, but that is in no way distracting or overwhelming.

Source: unita.co

Use It to Highlight a Pop of Color

Negative space can and should also be used to highlight other elements on a page. When you surround a colorful element with white space, it will pop more than if it were buried in a plethora of other colorful elements.

Investing.io is a great example of this tactic. Their negative space is truly white, and they have chosen a vibrant violet for their CTA color. It’s the first thing you notice on the page.

The white space also nicely sets off all the other colorful elements on the page, drawing the eye to the textual and visual elements.

Source: investing.io

When employing this tactic, make sure that you don’t overdo the colorful elements. Limit the vibrancy to the most important ones, otherwise the white space won’t be able to tone down the effect appropriately.

Use It to Separate Other Design Elements

Let’s examine how you can utilize white space to separate the visual elements on a page.

Startup Resources is a good example of how you can structure a large number of buttons and icons in an effective way. There is just enough white space between each element to make the page look clutter-free and easy to navigate.

Notice how they have also nailed the amount of space between headings and text as well.

Source: startupresources.io

You can, of course, choose to leave even more white space between similar elements. In that case, they will be even more prominent and noticeable.

Your best course of action is to test out various solutions before you land on the one you like most.

Consider Making It Dark

While most designers will choose a light negative space color, you can go dark, too, with great effect.

Dropbox is a prime example of how a dark background color can work without being too intimidating. Their homepage clearly stands out in a sea of other SaaS solutions, so it’s instantly more memorable.

Source: dropbox.com

It’s easy to browse as well, and the light visuals make a nice contrast. It’s certainly an unorthodox solution, but it is impactful.

This solution will work well for high-end brands, but will be the wrong choice for laid-back companies, or those targeting a very young audience.

Use It As a Demarcation Tool

Alternating between different white space colors can help you clearly mark different sections of a page.

Look at the Ahrefs homepage. They use their signature blue, white, and black to clearly distinguish what each section of the page is about. As you scroll, you understand you are entering a new territory, so to speak, when the background color changes.

Source: ahrefs.com

This is a great way to help visitors understand that new information is incoming and to clearly separate different topics or issues on a page.

White space can help you establish an effective visual hierarchy and ensure that the information you share on the page is presented logically.

Wrapping Up

Now that you understand what white space is and how you can use it to your advantage, take some time to consider how to make your pages more engaging and easier to browse.

A/B test various solutions and see how your visitors react. You can also ask for their input directly and ensure that you provide the best possible experience.