How to beautifully design a VKontakte group: step-by-step instructions. Design of a VKontakte group: a complete design guide New design of groups in VK

In this article we will look step by step at how to properly create, configure and properly design the VKontakte community.

Community creation

You can create a VKontakte community by going to the “groups”, “management”, “create community” tab.

Community type and topic

First, you will need to decide on the type of community, depending on your goals, and choose the topic of the community.

Group registration

After choosing the type of community, you can move on to the most important thing, this is the design. Designing your community is a kind of business card company, depending on how high quality the design is, your potential subscribers will draw conclusions about your work.
You can download the cover by going to “settings”, then clicking “download”.

On the cover you can place:

• Name
• logo
• motto
• contact information
• promotions or call to action
  Important point: The cover is the first thing a client will see when they go to your group, so the cover should be bright and attract attention.

Cover in the MTS community

Cover in the Tinkoff Bank community

Cover in the HeadShot community
Image sizes for designing the VKontakte community.
Cover size for VKontakte group 1590x400px
Avatar thumbnail size is a circle with a diameter of 200px

Also, VKontakte recently introduced dynamic covers for communities.
Dynamic covers have very rich functionality, with which you can display the last subscriber, the best commentator on the cover, set the background to change at your request, add a weather widget, time and much more.

Community Description

In the description, the main thing is to describe as briefly as possible the main advantages of the company.
Important point: there is no need to describe everything that your company has done, is doing or will do. No one will read a long description. You have a few seconds to attract attention before the client starts looking at posts on the community wall. Therefore, the description should only contain key points, reflecting the essence of the community/company.

Lifehack: In order to make a description of the community in more detail (with photos, links and beautiful layout), you need to add a wiki post to the pinned post, which will contain a bright picture and a call to action.

Examples of wiki posts:

Group avatar

A community avatar is an important detail in the overall construction of a high-quality design; in this article we have highlighted several very important points that need to be taken into account when creating a community avatar.
Taking into account the fact that now they mainly use community covers, the avatar itself in the group is displayed as a miniature. Therefore, here we will talk about how important it is to design the avatar miniature. As mentioned above, the avatar thumbnail size is a circle with a diameter of 200px.

1. 1. Text
      If you place text on an avatar thumbnail, it is important that it is large and does not extend beyond the avatar.
   2. Understanding
      It is necessary to place an image on the avatar that will make it clear what is depicted.
   3. Minimalism
      To make your avatar look relevant, you can make it in a minimalist style: fewer words and unnecessary elements that carry virtually no semantic meaning. The avatar thumbnail must be as simple and readable as possible.
   4. Attract attention
      So that the avatar miniature attracts attention. You need to design it so that it is not too white and boring, otherwise it will get lost against the background of the more colorful avatars of competitors.

What should I put on my avatar thumbnail?

Let's consider options for using an avatar thumbnail to attract subscribers to the community.

Community Settings

By going to the “community management” tab, you can come up with a short page address and provide additional information.

Next, in the “links” tab, provide links to your page on other social networks and a link to your website.

In the “sections” tab, enable the necessary ones. It is more convenient to set up a limited community wall, so as not to rake it in the future from posts by spam bots.

Include products if your community is for selling products or services.

You can also add applications to the community and customize them for your purposes. For example, the Applications application is the most convenient for working with leads. This is online registration and acceptance of orders. Or, for example, the Maps application, with the addresses of your stores, offices, events. Using the Buy Ticket application, you can sell tickets to events directly on the community page, i.e. subscribers/customers will be able to buy a ticket without going to your website.

Wiki menu - beautiful and informative

This is another way to show the uniqueness of your community, attract the attention of customers, and also structure services, products and all information about the page. Plus, using the wiki menu, you can set up direct links to go directly to the company’s website.

Wiki menu examples:

You can see a detailed guide to creating a wiki menu here -

Successful design of a VKontakte group should not only be beautiful, but also functional and convenient. Make design solve your marketing problems so that the group attracts a paying and buying audience to the brand and stays with it forever.

5 steps on how to create a group on VKontakte

Cover

The community cover today is an important tool for designing a brand group in Contact and promoting it. You can download it in the “Community Management” section by going to the “Settings” tab. A high-quality horizontal image in the community header itself plays the role of the company’s main promotional banner on the social network. It sets the mood, informs, enhances the image, calls for targeted actions, and sells at the same time.

1. Use high quality illustrations

The VKontakte community cover should be 1590x400 pixels in size, but it is better to upload a photo 2-3 times larger in .png format. This way you can avoid poor quality display.

2. Adapt the image for different devices

Please note that this image may appear differently depending on different devices– on mobile phones the edges will be cut off, so it is better to place all the most important information closer to the center.

3. Place a slogan and USP

Let the client see your philosophy and benefits from the first screen.

4. Display the product/service, process or result of its use

This way, a potential customer will immediately know what you specialize in and will be involved in the product.

5. Help customers contact you immediately

Write your phone number, e-mail, and other company contacts on the banner. If geographical location is important to your business, for example, you would like to Catering or horeca, the address will also be useful.

6. Announce events

Are you promoting concerts, expecting a new collection or product launch, or holding a festival/conference/client day? Tell everyone who comes to the community about this.

7. Present promotions and discounts

Where else on the main platform can you tell the audience that right now they can place an order from you at 2 times cheaper? Most importantly, do not forget to change the illustration after the offer expires.

8. Offer to take a targeted action

When loading the community cover, two buttons are placed horizontally in the lower right corner - Write a message and Join the group. Point an arrow at them to further attract the audience's attention. So, if a product is shown on a banner, you can offer to order it immediately in messages. And if there is a digest on it latest news– subscribe to always receive the latest information.

Upload an avatar and select a thumbnail

Some brands still do not adopt the cover, preferring the old look of the first screen of the group, using a combination of an avatar and a pinned post as the so-called “header”. In this case, one picture is a continuation of the other. It looks most impressive when the photo ends on the same level as the avatar.

When using the maximum avatar size of 200x500 pixels, the size of the image in the pinned post must be made 510x308 pixels. An excellent engaging technique is to attach a video uploaded through a social network player, which stylistically continues the avatar.

If you use a cover as a header, the avatar will then always be displayed as a thumbnail.

Rules for designing a VK community avatar thumbnail

A thumbnail is a small round image that is cropped from a large avatar, and is displayed in the search for groups, in the list of communities for each user and on the left under the cover, if there is one. Here are some design tips.

1. The thumbnail should be understandable to the audience

You shouldn't post a piece of weird illustration. Visualize something that the target audience will subsequently associate with the brand, for example, a logo, a product/service icon, or maybe the main marketing character of the brand.

2. Use only high-quality photographs

It’s better to upload the source 2-3 times larger than the required size, so you can forget about the terrible pixel “squares” that do not show you in the best light.

3. Design your own illustrations

Standard stock images will look cheap and unprofessional, and will become synonymous with users' distrust of the brand. Make unique designs in the same concept and colors as the rest of the design.

4. Pictures that contrast with the background of the page are what you need

When designing VK thumbnails so catchily, the “round piece” will stand out in the feed among other groups and will not merge with the background of the page.

5. Place contacts or USP of the company

Depending on the purpose set for the miniature, place on it a contact phone number or website address, information about free delivery, an indication of the most low price in a segment or share.

6. Make the text large and readable

It is better not to use serif or italic fonts - they are too noisy when viewed on PC screens, mobile devices and smartphones, littering the view. Make sure that the text does not extend beyond the borders of the cropped thumbnail. This will allow you to convey the message to the user correctly and effectively.

7. Use custom shapes

For example, in the desired round template, enter a polygon or other geometric shape on a white background. Create an unread notification effect or a graphic “online” icon.

Develop a menu

The menu is an important element of the design of a group in Contact, which makes it easier for users to navigate the group - it will be more convenient for people to find the information they need. Each element and page is created in a special programming language - Wiki markup. Using it, you can make images clickable and create convenient pages within the social network as if it were a website page.

You can use both open and closed menus. In the first case, the user immediately sees the sections that are included in it, in the second, they are preceded by a preview picture with the inscription “Menu”. The menu can also visually become a continuation of the avatar, if you use old version community design.

Develop a product showcase

When placing products in your community showcase, remember that users always see the first 3 items. Place the most popular and most ordered ones in them, uploading a presentation image in the same style. Publish here uniform icons or photos of the products themselves. Services can be placed in products. In the design, show the process of providing the service or its result. The size of such a picture will be square – 400x400 pixels.

Post design

1. Make full use of available image sizes

The maximum width of an image in a feed is 510 pixels. Square images of 510x510 pixels and rectangular images of 510x300 pixels look most impressive.

2. Develop a custom post style

To make your posts look individual, come up with a unified style, font and color scheme.

3. Place short text on the picture

For example, you can divide an image into 2 parts - text and graphic, or write text while darkening the background. To make the text visible without a darkened background, write it on a background (a contrasting graphic block of a uniform color) or add a shadow to the inscription. Photos with a frame look good.

4. Make several templates for different purposes

For example, for quotes use one template for the presentation of visual information, for the announcement of materials from the site - another, and for competitions a third.

Use these absolute techniques, and your company will be presented on VKontakte in the best possible way, and it will be convenient for customers to interact with it. But don’t forget that everything needs moderation! Look at even more fresh ideas for designing a VK community on the services page of the Tesla Target agency.

Dimensions of the main elements for decoration

The VKontakte platform for business is developing and constantly releasing additions for groups. If previously it took a few minutes to create a group - come up with a name, enter a description, put a link to the site and upload a couple of pictures, now everything is much more complicated. The design of the entire community as a whole needs to be carefully designed in order for it to fulfill its main purpose. In particular, for business it is sales, for thematic publics it is the interest of advertisers.

• community name— any text in any language, no longer than 48 characters, you can use emoji;
• group description— no more than 4000 characters (when ranking a group in search engines, it is taken into account as );
• avatar— the minimum size is 200x200 pixels, the maximum is no more than 7000 pixels on each side. You can use JPG, GIF or PNG images;
• cover— the minimum size is 200 pixels in height and 795 in width. The recommended image size is 400x1590 pixels. Formats - JPG, GIF or PNG;
• live community cover(for mobile) - videos or pictures with a resolution of 1080x1920. Duration no more than 30 seconds, file size up to 30 MB.
• group menu;
• action button;
• Contact Information;
• pinned message - any post with a video, photo, survey, GIF, etc.;
• other sections and elements as desired;
• applications and widgets.

Community Description

Description is the text that users see immediately when visiting the group. Its goal is to interest. It is necessary to competently and interestingly describe what the group is. In the design of the text, you need Special attention pay attention to facts about the group, how it is useful for a person. To enhance the effect, it is better to separate the information using emoji.

How to add or change a description

In the group’s side menu, go to the “Management” section.

Fill out the “Community Description” section. If you need to edit the description later, follow the same algorithm.

Avatar

Avatar- picture, photo of the group. This is the first thing that catches your eye. Ava is seen by people at the top left of the post in the feed and when visiting the community page. It is better to make the avatar in such a way that even in a reduced form it is distinguishable and recognizable. For example, like Colonel Sanders.

Now there are many online services and applications that can create you a beautiful avatar for the group.

• AvaMaster - upload a photo (or company logo), select from the options presented.
• Vk Profi - allows you to create all the basic graphic elements for the design of communities and public pages.

How to set or change an avatar

To add or replace a group photo, you need to go to the community page, point to the current avatar and select “Update photo” in the menu that appears.

A window will open in which you need to click “Select file” and upload the desired image from your computer.

Cover for VKontakte group

Cover a relatively new element in the design of communities. It allows you to replace regular avatars and gives you the opportunity to get creative with the design. The group becomes brighter and more attractive.

To add a cover, go to the community management and click “Add” next to the corresponding item and upload a picture.

It might look like this, for example:

Try to place the most important information in the center so that when viewing the group from different devices, the information on the cover is not cut off. Also, you can add additional text prompts: “Join the group” or “Visit the site.”

Community Live Cover

You can also make a cover that will be visible only to group visitors from mobile devices and mobile application users. This cover is called a “Live Community Cover” or dynamic.

To make a live cover, in the same section where we set up the regular cover, scroll down a little and add vertical images or videos.

Such a cover will allow you to work more effectively with an audience who prefers to watch social networks from smartphones.

Pinned post

Secrets of creating selling communities in VK

As a bonus, we share the secrets of designing a VK group and our experience, which will allow you to make the design at an advanced level. For example, you can set up a beautiful block of various applications that will increase engagement.

Free apps. Go to community management and go to "Applications" to edit settings.

Here you can choose to add an application that will complement the functionality of the group. For example, as in our group, there is a button “Support the community”, by clicking which you can donate for the benefit of the community any amount from 100 rubles. It could also be a product store, a questionnaire, tests, online chat, a newsletter subscription, etc.

Other useful widgets and applications:

• questionnaires;
• tests;
• registration for services;
• sending messages;
• goods store;
• and so on.

. In the group settings, set up an action button, this will help motivate users to take the desired action. Using this button, you can direct visitors to the site, to the application, and to a quick call to the phone or via VK. You can configure it in the first window, after going to community management.

Additional design elements that can be used:

Conclusion

If you want to successfully promote a group on VK, then be sure to devote time to its correct and beautiful design. The more thoroughly you approach this issue and think through all the scenarios of user behavior after going to the group page, the higher the conversion to subscription, and subsequently to purchase, will be.

The topic of this article is the new design of VKontakte. Changed again, now you can set a horizontal cover in a group. Designing your VK community with such a header is much more interesting. Frankly, no Photoshop knowledge is required here. And you can make a beautiful picture even in PowerPoint, Fotor, Canva, Pixlr Editor without any special skills.

By going to the group, you will notice that in those groups the buttons “Pinned entry”, “Information” and “Click menu” have become visible. And before they were hidden. Naturally, all the registration of the groups began immediately.

Uploading a new cover

Now let's figure out how to enable the ability to install a horizontal header. Let's click on the "Manage" button.

Then click on the last one and download the new cover of the VKontakte group. This is where you can understand that the download file can be of any size! But no less than the size 1590x400 px. We create a cover prototype in any editor. Next, we can select and save the area that meets the VK requirements. Here's a tip on where to find a cover image and which editor to use to

What is interesting about the new design of VKontakte?

The main thing: there is more space for information. Now here you can write the name of the group, the purpose of its creation, a call to action, and so on. Such a design will be logically complete and more functional. But you can leave the old design, it’s a matter of everyone’s taste.

When you design a horizontal cover, you will notice that the internal menu now somehow falls out of the general context. I think it would be better to pin the image to go to the menu. And use it to host wiki pages in the group.

At the same time, I would like the developers to add some other option for setting up a beautiful transition to Wiki pages.

I would like to note that since 2016, the developers of the VKontakte social network have been actively trying to set up this network to promote business. Make it more convenient for business or something. From my point of view, this is very good and is in great demand among many Internet entrepreneurs.

But most importantly, in my opinion, they need to carefully consider the “Bans” system so that entrepreneurs can work quietly without interfering with those users who came to have fun on the social network.

How to make a VKontakte group cover online

Use your creativity and choose what you prefer: a horizontal cover or the already familiar VKontakte design. Creating online and installing a new cover is clearly presented step by step in the video below the article.

P.S. I hope this information is useful to you.

P.S.S. Use your creativity and good luck in all your endeavors!

This article will be a detailed manual and I will tell you how to make a menu for a VKontakte group. A beautifully designed VK group menu contributes to a real increase in visitors and sales growth on the site.

Hello my dear readers. Let me tell you today how to make a beautiful menu for a VKontakte group and completely free. By the way, having learned to create such topics, you can earn a little money from this -))). Already not a single commercial site works without creating its own community in in social networks especially VK, which is guaranteed to help bring in new clients, as well as promote your business.

But if your community is not attractive and like everyone else, who will want to stay there? I think no one!!! So let's decorate our groups with high-quality design and learn how to do it very quickly. Before you start creating graphics and our future menu, you need to install the Photoshop program on your computer for further cutting of pictures. Many will ask why you need to cut pictures at all. The point here is that for each menu link we will have to create a separate strip from the general banner.

Today there are several types of created menus:

• Open with active items;
• Closed as a pinned post;
• With individual pictures or a common adjacent picture of the banner and menu.

The essence of creating both options is the same. The only main difference is additional elements and record types, and this will be discussed in more detail in this article.

To work with the menu it will help us wiki markup, which is built into the VKontakte text editor today. It differs from the usual one in that it will use standard commands to display a particular image and insert links to the necessary elements. The wiki markup itself allows you to insert code to display images, videos and other elements.

VK group closed menu

In this case, we will see to the left of the main group avatar a hyperlink in the form of the inscription “group menu”, when clicked on, our menu with active items and images will open.

The menu will look like this:

Open group menu (pinned material)

The idea is to create already open menu items that will be displayed in the description of the group itself, where it is usually displayed for all conditions. Our picture will be attached to the description, which we will prepare in advance and link it to the page on which we will have active items. This menu has become very popular recently and is in demand among customers. They look like this:

How to make a beautiful menu for a VKontakte group: step-by-step instructions

So, first of all, we will need to create the main avatar of the group, which we will place on the right, and the stub for our menu in the form of a banner.

• For an avatar 200x332 pixels;
• For the main menu banner, 395x282 pixels.

As you may have noticed, the height of the images is different and this is done so that the images do not move down in height and are at the same level since the height of the community name and status takes up about 50 px and we will need to remove this value from the height of the menu.

To make it clear, if the height of the main avatar of a group is 332, then we subtract 50 from it and get the height of the main menu equal to 282. If the dimensions do not matter, then the height can be set arbitrarily.

The next step after creating a community will be setting up materials, and here we need to prohibit participants from creating additional pages and blocks, but only writing on the wall. To do this, you will need to go to the section under the group avatar called “community management” where we need to make our materials “restricted” as shown below.

Now let's start creating the overall composition. You can, of course, simply insert a picture instead of an avatar and into the description, but let’s not be amateurs and will show you how to do it professionally so that it is one full-fledged picture, turning into one another.

Let's create a new canvas in Photoshop with dimensions of 600x350 pixels, which we will use as a stencil by cutting out openings in it for our pictures. To work, we need to convert the sizes of all elements and rulers into pixels and this is done along the following path: “Edit-installation-main” and here we set the pixels.

The next step in creating open menu It is necessary to make clippings for the banner and avatar, which we will then receive for downloading. To do this, go to the section of the left vertical menu and select cutting.

Using the left mouse button, as if you were selecting an area, you need to select blocks of the sizes we need and after each selection, press the “Delete” button and select 50% gray. Such actions will lead to the blocks being of the required size and highlighted in a color different from the main background.

It should look like this:

Now we just select the eraser and use the “magic eraser” function to click on each gray block and get a stencil with cutouts. The next step is to select our main image and place it under the background and get ready-made pictures on which you can write text with the name of the menu or other advertising elements.

Great. After you have placed a picture of our design, we just have to select “save for Web” and as a result we get 2 of our pictures. Now we go back to our group and can fill in the main avatar (vertical). We will use the banner for the menu a little later when working with the wiki markup code.

Let's create the menu itself, with active items that will redirect the user to the necessary sections of a third-party site or to albums and catalogs in the group itself. We will use a new image for variety -))).

So, let's go back to Photoshop and create a new canvas with dimensions of 400x300 pixels. Then select in the section: file-place and select a picture for the menu background.

We place the buttons of our future menu on the picture and cut the picture as we did above by selecting the necessary blocks. After which we also select “save for web” and get a folder with our cuts. In my case, I got 4 pictures in a separate folder.

Now we need to upload the pictures downloaded from Photoshop into a separate album and hide them from prying eyes. After loading, each picture will receive its new name and unique id.

Please note that you must have:

• Materials are opened in “restricted” mode;
• Discussions included;
• The folder with photos is open to everyone.

Now all that remains is to configure our page where the menu will be displayed. To do this, go to the main page of the community and select fresh materials and edit and call “OUR MENU”.

Next, we need to insert the pictures that we received when cutting in Photoshop. Some people use markup codes, but in order not to overthink it, I suggest that you simply select inserting a picture by clicking on the camera icon and upload one after another.

Working in a text editor, if after loading the pictures, we click on the icon in the form of brackets in the upper right corner, we should see this code:

Advice: An important point after loading images is to remove the padding. This can be solved by inserting “nopadding” before the image sizes.

For clarification, it is written below what comes from where, but considering that everything will be inserted automatically and there is no need to be clever, and open as some write each picture and take the id, then we simply download and save.

[]
where xxxxx is the id of your image
yyyyy - width in pixels (maximum 388)

It should end up looking like this:

Now our pictures are collected in a separate banner. And in order to add a link to each item, simply click on the image with markup disabled and in the link section paste the copied url.

And now we come to the most important and final point in creating our VKontakte menu. Now we need to save our page with pictures and copy its address. In my case it looks like this:

https://vk.com/page-116682062_51411604?act=edit&hid=183950676§ion=edit

Remember, at the beginning of the article we made a stub menu, which will be a continuation of our main avatar, and we made a stencil for it. This is exactly what we need now.

Go to the main page and do the following:

Step #1.

Paste the page address into the text field to new entry on the wall, after which it is converted into a link.

Step #2.

We attach an image of our menu placeholder to the post and click send.

Step #3.

Now, after publishing the post, click on the creation time in the lower left part of the post and select “PIN”.

Great!!! Let's finish here. Now you know how to create cool menus and you can earn good money from it. I advise you to do everything in the following order:

• We come up with a structure and order the design of menu images;
• We resize and cut all images;
• Insert pictures into albums;
• We edit all the cuts in the editor and publish them on the main pages of the group.

As a result of our work, we will get this menu.

But the menu itself, when clicked, will pop up with active links. It’s worth playing with the sizes and adjusting them to fit your screen, but don’t forget about display on mobile devices.

IMPORTANT: After changing the VK design in 2016, new changes were made when creating images and requirements for pictures about which.

Download VK group menu template + all lesson sources

I hope the material was useful, and you now easily understand how to make a beautiful menu for a VKontakte group. Subscribe to blog updates and see you soon in new posts. If you have any questions, write them in the comments, and I will definitely help you.

I am attaching a video to reinforce what you read -))).