Web design is the aesthetic part of a website. If we use a car as an example, the body of a car, where headlights go, where tail lights go, door styles, and their location, etc. all in the web design category. Web designer usually works with the visual part of the website. Color schema, videos, banners, wireframes, images, etc.
Important factors while designing a Website:
-
Usability:
The web designer creates the structure of the website. The logic of the website was created by the web developer by using this structure. As we always say, the best idea is to have your designer and the developer the same person if you want the most functional website. Some people just don’t do both so in the worst case, they need to be in touch while working on the project. No one can tell you exactly what is designer’s job is or what is developer’s is.
-
Speed:
Page speed is one of the most common reasons why some websites rank lower even though they have everything done perfectly. Page speed is affected by multiple reasons, but 70% of these websites are image sizes and scales. Images and other multimedia content are all placed by the web designer as long as they are related to the structure of the website.
-
Responsiveness:
If you haven’t heard about responsive design before, it is about the usability of the website on different devices with different screen sizes. It can be done in multiple ways. Since Google’s recent update, the responsive design was a must-have, but the responsive design left its place in the mobile-first design with the recent update. Even though the mobile-first design is more about coding, there are still images needed to be scaled for the mobile version of the website.
-
Bounce rate:
Good web design has a big effect on reducing the bounce rate. A web designer creates the wireframe which affects the usability of the website and also how it looks. We always say that the look of a website is not everything otherwise graphic designers would be web developers. But “not being everything” does not mean “being nothing”. Let’s see what Google says about the Bounce Rate.
Can a web designer complete a website?
A web designer himself/herself cannot complete a website unless he/she has web development skills. No one can clearly say what exact point the designers or developers part to do. Wherever the designer leaves it is the point where the developer starts. Having your designer and developer in connection or using the same service provider or freelancer to be your designer and the developer at the same time is a great idea. Misconnection between the designer and the developer can cause big issues on your website and an extra bill from the developer. It is always better to make things clear with the designer and confirm with the developer if you are using a non-related designer and developer.
What are the web design steps?
Web design does not look complicated as the other parts of website building like search engine optimization but web designers also need to have multiple skills and a big imagination. They start from scratch and create the skeleton of the website. Let’s look at what are those steps every web designer needs to go through.
-
Creating the idea
Web designers will create an idea based on the given information by the client. They will designate the possible pages, the structure of those pages, where to display multimedia content, and where to place the written content. They will also set up the main page structure which means the specifications of the header, banner, footer, etc.
-
Finding the color scheme
Once the web designer has done creating the main structure, he/she needs to color those areas based on the colors of the sector, country, client logo, and many other factors. We all know colors have psychological effects on us but more than that, some colors or color combinations may have good or bad meanings in different ethnical groups more than their psychological effects. Creating a color scheme requires deep research and patience as much as it requires good eyes for color balance.
-
Planning the main logic
Website logic is where we create the “web”. That is very similar to the spider web. A single website may hold thousands of links connecting to one another.
Although most of these links are created by the web developer, the main links will be developed by the web designer. These main links may be the links on the main menu, side menu, footer menu, sponsors if any, etc. Developers usually create their links and a single page for that link to follow. Web developers also use the main page structure created by the web designer while they are making an additional page. They may also need to create fully custom landing pages but very rarely.
As an example, you can check our other articles [HERE] and you will see pretty much they are all in the same structure. This is an SEO-friendly article structure with a 100% SEO rating as you can see in the graphic at the end of the search engine optimization article page.
-
Editing the multimedia content
We feel like you are saying “web designers are not graphic designers”. You are right. Web designers don’t create multimedia content, they will edit it. While editing, they only size and scale them for the web. They don’t go into the graphic design part of the content. Edited content is very important. It will affect the page speed and page speed affects the user experience directly or indirectly.
- The direct effect is that a slow-loading web page causes a higher bounce rate.
- The indirect effect is that a slow-loading website gets a lower search engine ranking.
Click to get more information about page speed optimization or image optimization.
-
Digitalizing the ideas
When all the design items are collected, designers start placing them and creating the planned wireframe by using web languages like HTML, CCS, and JS. This part is more like putting the toy blocks together and building a skyscraper. The design of a website is like the root of a tree. Without strong roots, even the most beautiful trees cannot survive. Once the web designer is done, we will have more or less a skeleton template ready and the web developer will build a website on that skeleton template.
How often do I need a web designer?
You only need a web designer once, unless you want to make major changes to your website. The rest of the progress will be done by the web developer on the same skeleton template already designed by the web designer. On the other hand, you will always need a web developer constantly working on your content to make it better, and better, and better…
Check out our local Kansas City Website Design and St. Louis, MO Website Design pages for more information.