How to create the perfect website style guide

A unique and instantly rec­og­niz­able style is central to the design of a website. When it comes to large-scale web projects with several teams, a website style guide that covers essential design features ensures the content and design of a website is con­sis­tent no matter who’s working on it.

What is a website style guide?

In online marketing, a style guide is a set of rules for the uniform design of an online presence. Your online presence isn’t just your website though, it also accounts for social networks and apps.

Closely related to corporate design and corporate identity. help companies to present a cohesive front across all com­mu­ni­ca­tion channels—be it on social media, in emails, via the company website or through online pub­li­ca­tions. Such guide­lines are a great resource for employees and help to clearly com­mu­ni­cate how to represent the business both visually and textually, so that (potential) customers can instantly recognise the company online.

While there’s no au­thor­i­ta­tive de­f­i­n­i­tion on what a style guide is in the context of web design, one thing is clear: It’s more than just creating a pretty logo and a company color scheme. In addition to deciding upon the fonts and colors that should be used, a website style guide also de­ter­mines image design and the arrange­ment of elements as well as the tone of voice of written material.

If followed properly, a solid web style guide will ensure that a website is cohesive and that the design and color scheme are con­sis­tent. This should be the case even if different designers are working on different parts of the website or if different types of websites are being used for the same brand.

Why is a website style guide important?

It’s important to have a style guide, because without one, col­lab­o­rat­ing on the design and content of a website can be rather difficult. A style guide helps to ensure that the design of a website isuniform and speaks to the target market by com­mu­ni­cat­ing design concepts and ideas to a whole team (and in some cases several teams) of designers. A well-planned website also makes it easier for visitors to connect with a brand and may even lead to them rec­om­mend­ing the brand to others.

A website style guide is also important for com­mu­ni­cat­ing concrete rules in design patents, for example, rules about how a company’s logo can be used.

What are the benefits of having a website style guide?

By creating a style guide for the design of your website, you have a document that you can share with new de­vel­op­ers and designers, reducing the amount of work that you have to do every time you onboard a new developer or designer. A style guide can also help to cut costs that would otherwise arise from having to redesign parts of your website that do not align with the brand identity.

A uniformly-designed website com­mu­ni­cates pro­fes­sion­al­ism and cred­i­bil­i­ty. Customers and users are much more likely to want to visit your site and spend more time on it as well. Having a con­sis­tent­ly designed website and social media presence also helps to increase brand awareness.

3 website style guide examples that get it right

So, what does a finished style guide for a website look like? There are some examples that you can easily find online, including the Boy Scouts of America’s brand identity guide, Zoom’s style guide and Mozilla’s style guide. By clicking or scrolling through the different chapters in each of the style guides, you can get a good im­pres­sion of the level of detail needed to create a com­pre­hen­sive website style guide.

Boy Scouts of America website style guide

The lengthy guide to branding for the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) focuses on a range of important details, including font choice, badges, branded products and corporate identity. The opening pages are dedicated to covering the whole idea behind the BSA and designed to inspire readers to rally behind the project. One big recurring feature through­out the style guide is the use of full stops, with the BSA’s main slogan being Prepared. For. Life. ™. Their style guide regularly high­lights the im­por­tance of periods as a way to add weight and power to sentences and state­ments. The BSA also offers a lot of in­for­ma­tion on brand po­si­tion­ing and the im­por­tance of main­tain­ing a good brand image at all times.

Zoom website style guide

In contrast to the BSA’s style guide, Zoom opts for a more compact approach. Under the Design Elements section of its brand guide­lines, Zoom focuses on providing in­for­ma­tion about its logo, font, pho­tog­ra­phy style and color palette.

Mozilla website style guide

Another great example of a web style guide from a suc­cess­ful or­ga­ni­za­tion is the digital style guide from Mozilla. Here, the focus is on the logo and how to properly use it. The style guide contains rules about what sort of back­ground should be used with the Firefox logo. It also contains guide­lines for colors that cor­re­spond with certain actions or responses from the browser.

All of the examples emphasize the im­por­tance of usinggood il­lus­tra­tions and short de­scrip­tions to make sure your website style guide is clearly un­der­stood. The most important thing is main­tain­ing a logical structure: The Boy Scouts of America website utilizes an effective table of contents page for their PDF format. With Mozilla, users can quickly navigate to pages with a menu located on the right side of the screen. Similarly, Zoom has also provided nav­i­ga­tion­al elements on the side of their screen, however, they have opted for the left side. You can use the style guides above as in­spi­ra­tion for your own web project.

How to create an effective website style guide

If you’re running a company or are re­spon­si­ble for helping to develop a company’s image, sooner or later you’ll be faced with the question of how to develop a website that reflects the company and its mission. You’ll also need to think about how to design the website in a way that makes it instantly rec­og­niz­able. Your answers to these questions should form the foun­da­tion of your web style guide. Once you have the foun­da­tion laid, you’ll want to take time to think about your target market, the details of your design, and how to best com­mu­ni­cate your vision and keep it up to date.

Analyze your target market(s) and define your corporate phi­los­o­phy

One of the first things to do before writing your website 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 gather lots of data and carry out an in-depth analysis of your target group: It’s important to define the age, gender, ed­u­ca­tion­al back­ground, living situation and interests of your target audience as precisely as possible. This is because you can only ensure your website provides and displays content in a way that resonates with them by actually getting to know them. The website style guide should also describe your corporate phi­los­o­phy as well as the company’s ob­jec­tives and tone of voice. 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?

Define your tone of voice, color palette and ty­pog­ra­phy

Your corporate image and the in­for­ma­tion you gather on your target market should be in­cor­po­rat­ed into your website’s design guide­lines. In order to increase brand recog­ni­tion, most websites use the same color scheme that they use for the company logo. But your target market can also influence your choice of color. Websites targeting a younger audience, for example, will typically have bolder and more striking colors than sites designed for an older target market. Websites for older target markets usually stick to simpler designs with muted colors. The same can be said of font choice, too. Websites aimed at younger people are more likely to go with unusual and unique fonts to spark interest in their website, while tra­di­tion­al and classic fonts are chosen in order to come across as being more serious. Always remember the im­por­tance of read­abil­i­ty though. No matter how nice a unique font or color scheme may seem, if your website is difficult to read, it will deter all site visitors, re­gard­less of de­mo­graph­ic.

The website style guide should also contain in­for­ma­tion on which colors, words, icons, etc. should not be used. Certain words can carry negative con­no­ta­tions that the website and the company may want to distance them­selves from. That’s why it’s important to make note of these so that all employees are on the same page and don’t use these words when creating content for the website. The same applies to colors and images: Which color com­bi­na­tions should be avoided? Which image content should never be posted to company social media accounts? If you have already created a logo for your company, you should also include the logo design in your style guide.

Some of these may sound really obvious, but including guide­lines about content that you don’t want to feature is also crucial for a good website style guide.

Include detailed in­for­ma­tion and examples

The more exact and precise your web style guide is, the more money and time you’ll save in the long run. You should explain the guide­lines in as much detail as possible: Colors should be clearly defined with hex codes, RGB values, and cor­re­spond­ing mapping. A short de­scrip­tion can also be useful to explain why the colors 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(s). You’ll also need to specify where to place icons, button elements, banners and logos as well as which colors can be used for them.

Creating a visual summary instead of relying solely on words can often provide more clarity. Such il­lus­tra­tions can contain specific in­for­ma­tion about column width and line height, allowing the designer to quickly get an idea of how every­thing should appear on the finished page. Including sizes for images, icons and logos is also a good idea.

You should also define how fonts should be used and which size they should have. Think about how, when and where par­tic­u­lar fonts should be used. A good website style guide will also include examples. These are used to show which font should be used for the main headings, for sub­head­ings and for the general text. It’s also important to include in­for­ma­tion about line spacing, in­den­ta­tions, and spacing between in­di­vid­ual page elements.

Of course, not every company is able to include a web design style guide on their own website, which is why we’ve included the BSA’s PDF web style guide to show how you can create a well-struc­tured handbook that can be given to employees and designers before they start working on the project.

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

Maintain and update your style guide

Once you’ve created your website style guide, your focus will shift to updating and modifying your web presence ac­cord­ing­ly. This is the only way to ensure a united front across all com­mu­ni­ca­tion channels in the long run. A uniform approach is essential for branding and corporate identity. But this doesn’t mean that the web design style guide for a company should never be changed. In fact, quite the opposite: You should regularly maintain and update your website style guide. Ask yourself: Are your designs still current? Is your font still modern? Are there new web design trends that you should implement on your website?

Remember that the tastes and pref­er­ences of your target group may change. So, while it’s important for your web presence to remain con­sis­tent and true to the website style guide you initially developed, you should pay attention to trends and how they change and adapt your guide­lines as you see fit.