What is web design (and how do I get it right)?

So, isn’t a website just a website? Wrong. A sloppy, difficult-to-navigate, or out-of-date website can damage your brand. We’re not suggesting it may be detrimental to your brand; we’re stating it will be.

But how can you put yourself in position to succeed? You may create a stunning website by doing an excellent job from the start. But what exactly is web design, anyway? Continue reading to learn more about what web design is all about, why it’s important, and how to get it right.

What is web design?

What makes your website unique is its design. It’s what gives a website its look and feel, or aesthetic. It’s the process of organizing and constructing the components of your website, from layout to pictures, colors, typefaces, and graphics.

Web design includes a variety of elements that collaborate to produce the end result of a website, including graphic design, user experience design, interface design, search engine optimization (SEO), and content development. The five core content elements defined in the previous section exist to provide structure and organization for any given website. These components influence how a website looks, feels, and functions across various devices. If you want to learn more about the whole process of creating a website, read this in-depth guide.

Web design is a different discipline from web development, which entails the creation of code that allows a website to function. When you create a website, you must use both web design and web development. While you may come across web designers that are also web and UX developers, these are two different skill sets.

Web designers take your ideas and turn them into a mockup that depicts what your future website will look like. The creative aspect of creating a website is handled by web designers.

Web developers—this is where a website’s code, or programming—often known as engineers or coders—is transformed into a coding language and embedded on the web to make it functional. They construct websites that are generally functional by customizing widgets and other tools.

A user experience developer, the term “UX designer” refers to a person who designs usability and user experience into websites. They have technical abilities as well as creative talents, and they use them to develop websites that catch and keep visitors.

Why is web design important?

Our research found that first impressions are extremely important. We can’t emphasize enough: if you don’t have a strong online presence, you’re putting your business at risk.

A negative online reputation can harm your company’s bottom line. Customers who conduct an internet search for your brand and discover nothing might believe you have closed down. If they look for something better, they will get the impression that you don’t care about your business or product. Make every connection that starts on your website a pleasant experience by ensuring that it is.

Let’s take a look at some tell-tale indicators of excellent web design and what distinguishes it from poor web design.

What does good web design look like?

Web design isn’t subjective. With other sorts of design, like as illustration or sticker design, the definition of “good” is largely a matter of personal taste. With web design, the distinction between “good” and “not good” is a lot clearer. A well-designed website gives visitors exactly what they want.

The goal of the design is to get people to take a certain action, which is termed “conversion.” In web lingo, “convert” means prompting users to perform a particular activity. A conversion occurs when a user follows through on an activity that your website has prepared them to execute. Conversions can be anything from signing up for a newsletter to making a purchase to setting up an account or gaining access to additional information on the site.

The goal of this book is to teach you how to create a successful website:

• Negative space is used effectively in this design
• The page is simple for the user to understand (the fewer options the user has, the more likely they are to become overwhelmed and confused)
• Obvious, clear calls to action
• It is crucial for your company to have a clear business objective and purpose. To help you reach that goal, here are some links to other articles with tips on how to make things more compelling
• Responsive design (a website that adapts to the user’s screen and resizes and reorients itself, making it simple to use on any device: phone, tablet, laptop or desktop browser)
• Appropriately sized fonts that follow a hierarchy (see “Limited distractions”)
• Relevant, high-quality content and images that hook your readers’ attention
• There is also a balance to be struck between the amount of text and pictures on each page (visitors may become overwhelmed by too much text, or bored by too little)

If you don’t believe that aesthetic design choices have an impact on conversions, think again. Your website must be aesthetically appealing, particularly to your potential user, so attempt to figure out what style would resonate with them.

Invest in eye-catching visuals that complement your brand. Steer clear of expected stock imagery.

It’s critical to keep your brand consistent while developing a website. Even the most impressive website is useless if it doesn’t represent your company.

Other building blocks of an effective web design are:

• Buttons
• Fonts
• Color palette
• The visual balance between your images and copy on each page

Of course, attractive web design isn’t only about function. Customers prefer websites that are interesting and go with the company’s image. nHowever you do it, combining an on-brand, engaging appearance with design features that convert is how you win at web design.

Web design: what doesn’t work

We’ve discussed what excellent design is. Now we’ll discuss what it isn’t.

Visitors should not be required to do any work in order to use your website. The entire experience of utilizing your website should be simple and intuitive.

Here are a few: Clear call to actions are excellent web design; murky ones are awful. Fonts with a high contrast ratio, such as sans serif and slab typefaces, are good, effective web design. -> Clear calls to action are good web design; murky ones are bad. Low-contrast fonts that are difficult to read.

Here are a few other elements to avoid:

• A distracting visual or a backdrop. Tiled backgrounds, in general, are to be avoided. While there are certain situations where a tiled background may be useful, they are generally distracting.
• Non-responsive design. Your website just has to be mobile responsive now.
• Links and buttons that are difficult to interpret. Links and buttons should not need to be hunted for; instead, they should be able to readily see which pictures and phrases will take them to new sites or confirm their selections. Fillable forms should also be easy to understand.
• The images and text in this presentation are unhelpful and generic, while the content provides no value.

In other words, there’s no such thing as a “wrong” or “right” way to use grids in web design. They may be utilized effectively or ineffectively, so making sure you do them correctly is essential.

Animation is another difficult web design aspect. You shouldn’t have a comet tail trailing the user’s cursor or cause them to scroll past a row of dancing hamsters to get to your material anymore, but an animated exit pop-up that directs users’ attention back to your site and encourages them to convert? Yes, it’s possible.

Creating a website that works

By getting involved in the design process of your website, you’ll be certain that you receive a website that is suitable or exceeds your expectations. Explain to your web designer about your brand, voice, and intended goals for the site. The more information they have, the better equipped they are to provide you with the ideal website design. Explain your goal to them and let them go to work. Learn how a 3PL company can help you with all of your shipping and logistics needs.