It is estimated there are around 4.49 billion web pages in the world today, what a figure! and this all thanks to the creative design brought about by web design. Web Design involves a set of skills and several guiding disciplines in its production process. These disciplines include interface design, graphic design, search engine optimization and user experience designs, with each of them playing a vital role in creation and maintenance of websites.
In previous years, often many web creators engaged in an array of aspects of the design process, and only a few handled the very technical concept of web engineering in the wider scope of web development. However, it’s important for web designers and website design companies to embrace the usability and be updated with web accessibility guidelines as they change. In web design there a few skills and techniques that govern the entire creation process and they include:
1.Marketing and Communication Design
This is one of the essential element in web design because it determines what works for a particular target market and this could be retrospect to culture, age, gender among others. In marketing and communication design, designers have to decide what sort of website they are designing, meaning, customer targeted websites might differ greatly from a business-to-business website. The two types of the websites have their own considerations, aesthetics, and overall design depending on the content inside a website.
2.User experience design and interactive design
It has been established that the flow and navigation of any website greatly determine the consumption and comprehension of content inside it. User experience directly relates to website labels, instructions, and layout. On the other hand, the interactive design on a website will influence how a user can move from point to another, from one page to another in search of content. So, the usefulness of a website is not only on the content but both its user experience and interactive design. This is challenges thrown at web designers to make user-friendly websites that are more intuitive and this is done through deploying essential tools such as plugins, themes or codes. The interactivity of a website will require more advanced web tools, which costs more, but it’s a sacrifice web designers have to make just to ensure they don’t end up creating a weak platform.
3.Page layout and motion graphics
We’ve earlier mentioned the aspect of the user interface, the page layout is an underlying base for that aspect. The quality of the page layout will influence the interface design process which will, in turn, affect how users respond to content within the website.
Web designers can opt to have page layouts varying in width, length, and pixel or stick to a single page layout design across the entire website. The choice of using motion graphics is affected by the target market, it’s more common in entertainment websites. Although there is a perception that motion graphics are meant for less serious content, but that doesn’t mean that more serious content such as business or government websites have to look gloomy and all that serious. They can be enhanced with graphic videos and animation for a little stylish feel.
4. Typography and fonts
Now, the content you’re probably reading is in a particular font. Do you know by changing that font to another will influence how you perceive the same content? And this is why web designers and creators have to choose either to have a single font throughout the website or have each page with different typography. A font should be scannable and provide an easy-feeling when reading. The secret is to avoid complications. Which gadgets do most of your users use to access your website? By answering this question, web designers will decide on which font or text to focus on.
The role of web design in bringing corporates, individuals or institution of education into the online sphere is a transformative project with no deadline. There will always be a change in user preference and interest, the creators must strive to keep up with the speed. Therefore, companies of parties in need of web services must also be willing to part with whatever cost is required of them in ensuring quality and effective online presence.