Web design is basically making web pages using web coding languages. Although you may think that the design process would be similar to designing for print, the way that people experience a website is different - they can come in at any page and will scan for information.
Web users are very goal driven and if they don’t find what they are after quickly and easily they will soon click on to another site. This means that for a website to achieve success, the designer must create something that looks good, is easy to navigate and holds interest. If the site is representing a company, it has to reflect that company in a good light and be in keeping with their brand identity.
There are many potential mistakes web designers can make but they can be avoided with proper planning.
One of the potential mistakes a designer can make is to have the same colour for a link once it has been clicked. Users like links to change colour because it helps them navigate and reminds them where they have already been. Whilst this function helps people avoid re-visiting pages that weren’t useful or that they don’t need to refer to again, it can also help them quickly find a page that was particularly useful or interesting to them.
Designers are now able to permanently set a font size using CSS style sheets and because they can, they sometimes do. Whilst it may seem a good idea to a 20-something designer that wants to make sure everyone sees the page as they intended, not everyone has good eyes. By disabling the ability for a browser to change up the font size, anyone with poor eyesight is immediately disadvantaged and perhaps even totally unable to view the site. This is obviously not a good thing to do.
Text is useful for web pages because it gives people something to read and it is also helpful for search engine optimisation. Search engines such as Bing and Google like text so that they can determine what a page is about and if it is relevant to the query typed by the searcher. Having said this, adding text on a site in a big block isn't good. As we have already already seen, web users scan pages to speedily pick out the important points. A big block of text is very off-putting. It needs to be broken up and made as concise as possible. Important wording will benefit from emphasis in bold.
Many people like things to be predictable. When they look at a website they are no different. If a website starts doing things they don’t expect they will have an incentive to leave. A website should follow the conventions of the web and act like other websites do in terms of functionality. If clicking the house symbol takes users on most websites back to the home page, they won’t want it to unexpectedly take them to a game on another site. Give users what they want.
If a web designer knows what the point of the website is and who the target audience is, they will be able to design a better site. This must be communicated to them in the design brief. It is down to the designer to ask the right questions and for the person briefing to feed as much information as possible to help them. The designer will then need to turn that information into an amazing website. If the designer has a proper brief and they use their design skills and knowledge of potential pitfalls, a fantastic website is totally achievable.
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