What Is Web Design?

Web design refers to the procedure of planning, developing and designing content intended for the internet. This web content is found in the form of websites, web apps, mobile apps and user interface design. As you might have guessed it like all things within the technology field, web design is far more complicated with a lot being done behind what the end user gets to see.

The web designer only works on certain aspects which include appearance, interaction and layout. Content is compiled by other people in the web design team and handed over to the designer who then uses it. Appearance relates to the aesthetics of the website or whatever project they would be working on. In layman\’s terms, aesthetics is the colour, font and images that the web designer uses. The layout is how the web designer arranges the content and how the website is structured.

Web Design Elements

This includes what the website or app is actually made up of. This includes areas such as visual elements, speed, navigation and so on.

Visual Elements

These include the actual text, fonts, colours, layout, arrangement, shapes, spacing, icons, images and videos included on the website design. The phrase \”do not judge a book by its cover\” does not apply when it comes to web design. Did you know that 94% of first impressions relate to your site’s web design and this impression is picked up in the first 0.05 seconds upon opening the site? Meaning people actually don’t have time to be impressed by your content even though content is just as important to keep the target audience on the website.

Speed

Slow websites irk everyone even if the design is top tier. Did you know that slow loading websites cost e-commerce businesses an average of $2.6 billion revenue loss each year!? It\’s essential to do adequate research to ensure that the tool that is used provides top-notch performance. You might want to use the Google Website Speed Test or GT Metrix to put your site to the test after finishing the design process.

Navigation or a Menu

Website navigation facilitates movement from one web page to another web page within the same website. This is the primary aspect that actually determines if the website actually functions and is usually taken for granted. It plays a pivotal role in ensuring that website visitors get to view more than just the home page and there are several navigation styles. Choose the simpler, easy to understand ones.

User Experience (UX)

User experience is a person\’s emotions and attitudes about using a particular product, system or service. It includes the practical, experiential, affective, meaningful and valuable aspects of human–computer interaction and product ownership. Having said this a few pointers on this are:

• Avoid Pop-ups

• Make everything mobile and desktop-friendly

• Never auto-play audio

• Have an easy to find button to exit videos or mute audio

• Do not underline text unless it is clickable

Related: 10 Ways to improve user interaction on your website.

Responsive Web Design

Responsive Web Design is where there is one single fluid design for your site which provides the most suitable viewing experience throughout all devices that the targeted audience may be using. It makes the website easy to read in that in minimises scrolling, panning and resizing the web pages. It uses CSS media queries to change styles based on the target device such as display type, width, height, etc., and only one of these is necessary for the site to adapt to different screens.

Advantages

• It is flexible, meaning it will always scale itself to work even on the newer, more bizarre screen sizes as they come out.
• It requires less maintenance in that you just manage the content of one website and will still receive benefits of your desktop SEO on mobile devices without having to create specific content.

Disadvantages

• It is a bit more complex as compared to Adaptive especially when converting an existing site. But this is manageable for any skilled developer.
• For websites that are heavy in content, it may take longer to load. This is because there is one design that is first supposed to be scaled to fit each scale size.

It is important to ensure that your website is well compatible with mobile phones as 85% of adults think that a company’s website when viewed on a mobile device should be just as good or even better than its desktop site. Design Agencies such as Melsoft ensure that your website is fully responsive and viewable on all screen sizes.

Unless you are very tech savvy, it is a good idea to choose a professional company with a proven track record such as Melsoft for your website\’s design solutions today. Melsoft has years of experience building and maintaining fast, secure and powerful Web Applications that can power your company\’s online strategy.

Related: How to make a website