Website Mood Board: Boost Your Creative Inspirations

Over 91% of web traffic stems from Google. And if your brand doesn’t have a website yet, you’re missing out! But creating a website is easier said than done. Like any creative endeavor, you can hit multiple roadblocks, especially if this is your first time.

Fortunately, there are many ways to keep your creative juices running. One way to get through design challenges is through a website mood board. It’s a tried-and-tested tool used by branding experts and designers.

If you’re about to embark on your eCommerce journey, read on and discover the wonders of website mood boards and how they can make sense of the chaos so you can have a website that delivers results!

These allow you to play with different concepts while you bounce ideas with your team.

A mood board is a hefty tool, especially in web development that entails backend and front-end processes. Designers get to curate something that can motivate the team, from crafting strategic designs to execution.

Influence of Mood Boards on Web Design

A well-designed website can positively impact your branding and design project. According to data, 88% of customers with negative site experiences wouldn’t return. It’s a quick way to tarnish your credibility.

Say you have an unresponsive website that takes minutes to load. Or an overwhelming user interface. That’s a huge turnoff for digital users. A bad web design may deter potential customers and hurt your SEO ranking.

But with a clear and defined website mood board, you can accomplish the following:

• Streamline ideas into a single easy-to-grasp concept
• Spark design inspiration within your team
• Maintain consistency in the design process
• Communicate brand message and new ideas to clients and other stakeholders

So, what makes up a good website mood board?

A good website has a perfect balance of functionality and design. While having an attention-grabbing platform is vital, it should also weave in features that amplify the brand experience and give value to your customers. A website should make people’s lives easier.

Luckily, a website mood board can point designers in the right direction to achieve these goals. Let’s begin by including these foundational design elements:

1. Pictures and Illustrations

Illustrations, vectors, stock photography, branded images, and product shots. There’s no better way to be inspired than to surround yourself with stimulating visuals. Add these elements to your mood boards and explore components and ideas you can integrate into your web design.

When selecting images, explore stock photo websites like Pexels, iStock, and Unsplash. Or scroll through Pinterest and Instagram. Browse through design platforms, like Behance and Dribbble, for graphic design and other illustrations. For offline inspirations, leaf through catalogs and magazines on lifestyle, fashion, architecture, etc.

Try not to overwhelm your mood boards by only including highly relevant images.

2. Typography

Your choice of typography can make or break your web design. In fact, did you know that different fonts evoke emotions, too?

Beyond ensuring that your website copy is easy to read, fonts and text layout express your brand tone of voice. Sans serif and rounded font styles give a friendly vibe. Thin, curvy, and stylized fonts represent elegance.

Typography also makes navigating your website seamless. For instance, varying sizes and styles can direct the attention of guests and visitors. Contrasting font typefaces help emphasize specific messages and create a more dynamic experience.

3. Colors

Colors can influence our minds subconsciously. That’s why they use red to signal drivers and pedestrians to stop. Or green for calming rooms. Colors also have cultural, emotional, and psychological significance. When applied to branding, color palettes can affect and influence our brand perception.

When creating mood boards, take the chance to formulate a color palette for an attractive website. Play with color schemes, like complementary colors, monochromatic, and analogous.

But also ensure that your chosen colors align with your brand values and identity and can help amplify your brand message. For example, texts in red get more attention than those in black.

4. Website Design Motions and Sound

Provide dynamic and compelling visual storytelling when you layer motions and sounds on your website. With repeated exposure, the brain can connect your brand and the sound and motions, boosting brand recall.

If you’re a yoga business, level up the experience of your website visitors by incorporating the sound of beach waves and nature and relaxing images. By doing this, you can bridge the in-store zen experience you provide to your digital portals.

5. Web Layout

A website layout can make sense of the clutter and avoid overwhelming the senses. You can choose from different types, like a split-screen layout, a modular grid layout, a zigzag layout, etc.

So, how do you know which layout to include?

Well, any of the mentioned layouts are great for creating an easy and smooth website experience. But your choice depends on what you want to prioritize. Maybe you want a layout that adapts to mobile and other devices. Or perhaps you want to boost your website's speed.

Whatever you go for, adding your ideal layout to your website mood boards saves you time when executing your website design because you already have a guide.

6. UI Elements and Navigation

UI elements are your website buttons, icons, search bars, checkboxes, scrollbars, and text fields. These components make your website interactive by activating commands and making navigation possible through clicks, hovers, and scrolls.

When selecting your UI elements, designers recommend prioritizing accessibility, clarity, and speed. Ideally, your website is inclusive, has a clear user navigation control, and a swiftly responsive interface.

7 .Other Inspiring Materials

Take the creative reign and add whatever you think is relevant to your brand mood board.

Run a brand audit and check past marketing campaigns, logo design, and other relevant materials. Review what worked and integrate them into your website mood boards. You can enhance existing website design ideas so you don’t have to start from scratch.

You can’t throw anything and everything into a website mood board and call it a day. There’s a careful and strategic design process to it. It’s similar to when you design your dream home, where you take the time to sit down and figure out your style and scout for the perfect furniture. If you want to optimize the results a website mood board can bring you, follow these steps:

Step 1: Define your goals

Your website isn’t merely a portal to connect with your customers. It’s a digital solution that addresses their challenges. To ensure this, set your goals before designing a website.

Your web design goals include creating a more engaging brand experience, increasing conversion, boosting leads, or providing resources. It also helps to know your audience—interests, motivations, and pain points— and competitors so you can create mood boards that meet your goals.

With a clearly defined purpose, you can determine what features to prioritize and integrate into your website that best serve your audience. Having goals also aids in allocating limited resources while optimizing results.

Step 2: Review branding materials and design

Your website is an extension of your brand and should align with your brand identity. By using cohesive brand elements, you can boost brand recognition.

Take your cue from your existing brand materials and design. With a well-branded website, you can create a strong presence in the digital space by differentiating yourself from other websites. Remember to weave in your unique selling proposition, too.

Components should align with the brand guidelines when curating your website mood boards. For instance, your color palette, images, and illustrations must reflect your brand personality and identity.

Step 3: Select a mood board template

There are more ways than one to create mood boards. And it all depends on your goals.

Say, you want to have an overview of the look and feel of your website. You can start with a visual concept mood board. Then, as you narrow down the website design details, like icons, typography, etc., you can explore other templates.

Depending on your purpose, website mood board templates include UI element mood boards, structure or layout mood boards, and animation mood boards.

Step 4: Collect and arrange visual resources

You have your goals, your branding essentials, and a template. The next step is to compile these design components on your website mood boards.

Most mood boards require selecting key images and illustrations and arranging them in different sizes. Focal images will be bigger, while the others can take a step back. Include your primary and secondary color palettes. You can also add color swatches for comparison of hues.

Sprinkle information around the board, detailing why you chose certain key elements. A comprehensive mood board helps you and your team make sense of your design thinking.

Remember not to crowd your mood board because it will only confuse your team. If you need to create multiple mood boards for different web design elements, like typography, then do so.

Step 5: Gather ideas and feedback from your team

A website mood board is often a collaboration of minds. To ensure everyone understands your website vision, present the final mood board to your teammates and see what they say.

Checking in with them is a great way to get fresh eyes to look at your work. Take it as a chance to ask the following questions:

• What emotions come up when you look at the mood board?
• Is the color scheme cohesive with the brand?
• Is the brand identity clear?
• Does the design address the challenges of the users?
• What changes should be made to the mood boards?

Step 6: Revise and refine your mood board

Once feedback and suggestions are in, treat them as important data and use them to develop your mood board. It may take a couple of rounds to get it right, but this design process ensures you encounter fewer mistakes when you finally execute your web design.

Again, a website mood board is a team effort. It’s an endeavor where you can explore creative possibilities, so don’t forget to have fun!

We have compiled several templates and inspiring mood board examples you can learn from.

Visual Concept Mood Board

Create a visual narrative of your website by breaking down the aesthetic and tone of your design. In a visual concept mood board, include design elements like close-up shots of products and other images, font styles, typography, textures, and words that resonate with your narrative.

You can also incorporate visual metaphors or images that connote an idea. For instance, Nivea took visual inspiration from a quarter moon to create this ad for its night cream product.

Content Structure/Layout Mood Board

Your website layout is crucial to the navigation experience of your users. Check which structure makes the most sense by creating a layout mood board. Here, you can arrange visual elements like images, headlines, body copy, and icons and test if the structure is easy on the eyes.

UI Element Mood Board

The UI element mood board consists of buttons, icons, dropdown boxes, widgets, and notifications, to name a few. They serve as input elements, output elements, and helper elements, ensuring a seamless aesthetic and functional web design.

With so many components, it can be overwhelming to choose. So, list down the different purposes you want your website to perform and prioritize accordingly. A rich yet efficient website experience where customers need not figure out complex functions increases retention and web traffic.

Animation and Interactive Features Mood Board

A static website journey can do the job. But sometimes, photos aren’t enough to educate people about your brand. So, why not add animations and other interactive features for a fun and dynamic experience?

But, animating your website can be an extensive process. You have to be decisive when collating functional (hovers, scrolling, etc) and aesthetic animations on your mood boards to see which works for your web design.

While it can be tempting to animate everything, it can slow your website. It can also limit accessibility for users who may have minimal internet bandwidth. Weed out design elements that don’t add value to your website.

So, you have all the basics of website mood boards down to a tee. It’s time to apply what you learned and create one!

Website mood boards are ideally best created digitally, especially if you need to add images and videos that are animated and sound to your design. Fortunately, the process is not as painstaking as physical mood boards. There are tons of platforms online that can help in creating beautiful and shareable digital mood boards. Here are some suggestions for you:

Canva

Canva is one of the best graphic design platforms for non-designers and professionals. It has everything you need for any design mood board, including a website.

Canva is free. But if you want to collaborate extensively with others, upgrade to a premium membership. The Canva Pro allows you to share your mood board so other designers can easily edit, add comments, etc. It also unlocks more design functionalities.

Miro

Miro has over 300 mood board templates for you to choose from. It boasts different workspaces for every stage of your web design, including design thinking, UX design, and vision board making. You can invite as many team members as you want on Miro, but only three boards will be editable at once.

Adobe Mood Board Maker

Design software favorite Adobe launched its mood board maker for free. It has an intuitive interface that welcomes designers of all levels. You can also connect your socials, like Instagram and Pinterest, and easily import videos and images to your mood board.

Making the website mood board is only the first step. In case you have no in-house designers, partner with a web design firm to get the professional help you need. Let them turn your website mood board into a reality!