Date Posted: 7/8/2013 9:49:22 AM
Posted By: BrianL7 Membership Level: Gold Total Points: 2289
Designing web pages is something that has become sort of a new science. With its own principles and rules to follow just like any other science that we have come to know. They are even people whose profession lies around designing websites and they are paid handsomely for that. Despite this rise in popularity in this new science, not many people know about designing web sites.So what is web design?Web design is the skill of planning and creating websites. There are different areas of web design: web graphic design, interface design, authoring, standardized code and proprietary software, user experience design and Search Engine Optimization. All these constitute what web design is. Thay are all combined to create a website that meets the objectives of the owner and designer.Despite all this in mind one may wonder and go on to ask what the imporance of web design is to the common man. Why is there so much gravity placed on it in modern times? Does it come with its advantages? Who benefits? All these are questions we never get answers for. That is unfortunate until this very day.First of all web design is important for businesse who want to have an online prescence thus widening their target market. The internet holds the largest pool of customers and all businesses want to have a "good catch". So therefore businesses embark on web design. The catch, however, is to know that not because you have a web page that people will automatically become your customers and establish brand loyalty with you. You need to catch them and keep them. And this is where web design plays a major role.It is important to know how to get the best out of web design. AS stated earlier, it comes with a host of skills and encompasses many disciplines all in one. If all these are observed by a business then there is a high probability that it will shoot sales through the roof.Another importance of web design is the crucial role it plays in online marketing activity. It’s a core part of your online marketing strategy with everything else you do pointing towards your website, and that means it’s vital to get it right unless you want to be a huge disappointment—if someone’s followed a link you need to wow them, and anything less than that will mean they start looking elsewhere. It’s where all online marketing activity is directed. It’s a core part of your online marketing strategy with everything else you do pointing towards your website, and that means it’s vital to get it right unless you want to be a huge disappointment—if someone’s followed a link you need to wow them, and anything less than that will mean they start looking elsewhere.An appealing site will attract attention and influence customers. Who would not want that? Web users browse hundreds of sites every month and every day, so it’s vital yours stands out from the crowd - have your shoulders above others. A good design will attract attention and encourage visitors to stick around—people will stay on a website 3 times longer if it’s more visually appealing whilst 74% of online shoppers say that a great website influences their buying habits, so a decent site will ensure you’re ahead of the competition. Thus more profits and no more sleepless nights.A good web desigin can build your brand, reputation and sales. Your website should be the perfect reflection of your brand, ensuring you’re delivering a consistent message to your audience whilst giving customers a great first impression and a decent site can be a great way to build on that whilst boosting your reputation in the process. Plus, it can lead to more sales as well—what more reason do you need?So as you can see, there is great importance in web design, more than you had thought earlier. Especially now that we live in the 21st century things are all plastered on the internet and most items are sold there. So the competition is being moved from geographical space to cyber space and you need to be a part of the shift and stand tall in the transition.There are basic principles one needs to learn when it comes to web design. It is not just a bunch of scibbles that one sees on a kindergaten pupil's homework. It is something much more than that and possibly even more. As I has stated earlier, it is a science of its own.The first basic principle one needs to know is visual hierarchy.There are certain parts of a website that are more important than others and those are the ones that get more attention than the less important parts. If a website menu has 10 items, are all of them equally important? QUite the contrary. That is why it is important to make important links more prominent. To do this you need to start with the business objective.Rank elements on your website based on the business' goals. If you do not have a goal, then you can never know what ot prioritize.DIvine proportions is the nect important Web design principle on needs to know full-well. Nearly all web sites use this.The Golden ratio is a magical number 1.618 that makes all things proportioned to it aesthetically pleasing. Many artists and architects have produced their work using the golden ratio, so why not you?Then there is also the Fibonacci sequence where each term is defined as the sum of the two previous terms: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21 and so on. The interesting thing is that we have two seemingly unrelated topics producing the same exact number.This is a comment from Twitter's creative director,"To anyone curious about #NewTwitter proportions, know that we didn’t leave those ratios to chance."This, of course, only applies to the narrowest version of the UI. If your browser window is wider, your details pane will expand to provide greater utility, throwing off these proportions. But the narrowest width shows where we started, ratio-wise."There you have it, straight from the horses mouth. Need I say more?Hick’s law says that with every additional choice increases the time required to take a decision. Thus another principle you need to know about web design.The more options a user has when using your website, the more difficult it will be to use. So in order to provide a more enjoyable experience, eliminate choices. The process of eliminating distracting options has to begin from the inception of the web design and should be carried on throughout the design process.Fitt's law stipulates that the time required to move to a target area is a function of the distance to the target and the size of the target. In other words, the bigger an object and the closer it is to us, the easier it is to use it.It doesn’t mean that bigger is always better. A button that takes up half the screen is not a good idea, and we don’t need a mathematical study to know this. Even so, Fitts’ law is a binary logarithm. This means that the predicted results of the usability of an object runs along a curve, not a straight line.A tiny button will become much easier to click when given a 20% size increase, while a very large object will not share the same benefits in usability when given the same 20% boost in size.And last but surely not least, is the Rule of Thirds It’s a good idea to use images in your design. A visual communicates your ideas much faster than any text.The best images follow the rule of thirds : an image should be imagined as divided into nine equal parts by two equally-spaced horizontal lines and two equally-spaced vertical lines, and that important compositional elements should be placed along these lines or their intersections.Now, these are the basics of web design and surely they need to be adhered to if you want to have a wonderful web design. Now you can go out there
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