by Deciding the right color, along with the right elements play an important role when creating a website. However, one wrong element could risk turning away customers from your website.
In website design there are many trends, some are outdated while others are current. Moreover, it is not only about knowledge that you acquire, but also the amount of practice that you do. If you just read and research; it won’t be enough.
Web development is also interlinked to web design; as a web designer you can easily fit in the front-end development category. This is because; it mainly deals with the appearance of the website.
What is website design?
For starters, a website is a combination of web pages that appear online. They are normally loaded using the https or http protocol. Some websites will require the www, while for others you can discard it and it will still work well. There are millions of websites online, so it’s essential to try to make yours as unique as possible. You have to be creative, unique and professional to stand out.
In addition, website design is the creative task of making a web page to look more attractive and more professional. Web design mainly deals with:
- * color
- * Font family
- * Font color
- * images, gifs
- * videos
- * layout
- * grids
- * styles
- * responsiveness
- * content
Harder to read font is often a turn off, while font that is spaced too apart makes readers feel like the script is never-ending. So, you need to find the balance in between.
Importance of knowing website design
- For starters, you will become more open-minded and creative in certain aspects. You will be able to understand what is better to use and which one is best left behind.
- You can easily work with web developers; (front-end developers, back-end developers and full stack developers).
- You can advance in any web-related field with ease.
- Knowing website design is also important because you will acquire skills such as creating animations, gifs, edit images and videos.
- If you are making your own website, you won’t have to consult a professional for services, but only for rectification.
- In website design, you also get to learn some programming languages like PHP, JavaScript and jQuery. With time, you can easily decide to advance with programming languages.
Latest Website Design Tricks and Tips
Every website designer should be up to date with all the current trends in the field. This will help you not be left behind while others advance in the field.1. Minimal use of slideshow
Slideshows were popular in the past, but overtime, people have diverted to using motion images and pictures. You may decide to have one picture, but modify the words that are shown there. For instance, the words can appear in cycles – this makes a website look very beautiful.Another new trend is having components of an image load at different times, for instance a house with a background of trees and the sun. Thus, when the web page loads the house appears first, followed by the trees and finally the sun. As a web designer, you can easily modify such an image to be that way.
2. Compression of the website’s files
Compression is when you reduce the size of your images, videos, files and content, to reduce the loading time of the website. There are various tools that one can use to measure and see the amount of compression to be done.By compressing your images and reducing your load time, your website will get more visitors. A research that was recently done stated that a typical website visitor normally stays on a web page for 8 seconds before getting irritated and leaving . Thus, if the website loads faster, someone will easily see what he/she wants and proceed with the website.
3. Responsive Websites
As a website designer, you are the one responsible for the responsiveness of the website. You need to make sure that it is mobile friendly on all devices. This is why you need to know what code to put to ensure the responsiveness of the website.
However, people normally think that it is the web developer’s role, while it is actually the web designer’s role.
4. Application of global changes
By applying global changes, you use certain tricks that will make changes to a whole page rather than having to go to every section to change a certain style. This entails using an asterisk as the selector, and you will manage to change everything on that page.However, this should not make you stop your usual coding. Tricks are good, but using them sparingly is the bigger trick.
5. Resizing videos
Ever visited a website and received a prompt that said “cannot load this video”? Well, this is because videos are normally heavy and take long to load.This also applies to YouTube. If you have a slow internet connection, you can’t easily load a video and it will keep on buffering while you are trying to load it. Thus, before embedding a video make sure that you compress it, but also ensure that you don’t lose the resolution of the video.
A jQuery plugin that can be used to ensure your videos load quickly is FitVideo.
6. Character count
A messy content layout is not visually appealing at all. This is why when it comes to measuring characters, they are commonly used instead of words. For a responsive layout, ensure that your page doesn’t look too crowded or too spaced out.Count the characters that can fit on one page, and then move the rest of the text to the line below. This will help make your webpage more visually appealing, and in turn will increase your visitors.
7. Optimization of content, images and videos on the whole website
The main advantage is that the website will load faster and be easily visible to the search engines. In search results, your web pages will appear among the first ones.Optimization is very important in all aspects. As a web designer, this should always be on your mind.
8. Images from Photoshop
Photoshop normally produces large-sized images. The real trick in this is to export it as an 8-bit PNG. Try doing that and you will see the magic. The quality will remain the same, but the size will reduce in the right way.This is a great solution that allows you to keep your image resolution intact, while significantly reducing the size of the image.
9. Color lovers
Just as the name states, this is a community of color lovers who normally exchange ideas on latest color trends and combinations. So, if you struggle with trying to decide the latest color trend or working with a select scheme, then this is the perfect place to get inspiration and find other like minded people who can help you out.10. Typecast
Typecast normally enables a web designer to select a font from the Google font and use it. In this way, you will know the kind of fonts that are applicable in a certain browser and those that are not applicable. There is also font squirrel that is also a great option.In addition, to the fonts, make sure you use large font sizes for easy visibility by the user. Reduce the words you write in italics. Italics are hard to read when it used withing a large paragraph.
11. CSS file
How you arrange everything on the CSS folder means a lot. You should name everything simply. In this way, you will be able to navigate easily on file.All the classes should be written neatly and in a simple manner.
12. Don’t use sidebars
Sidebars should be used in special cases only. Before, they were commonly used for easy navigation on the website. However, nowadays due to the Call to Action (CTA) buttons or interlinks, one can easily move to another page easily. Sidebars make the website to look overly crowded. Thus, it is better not to use the sidebars.13. White space
White space is the white bits between the content and images on a website. Previously websites used to be over crowded to offer more information, with limited navigation. However, today crowded websites are no appealing. If you crowd too many things on the web page, it irritates the visitor and you lose the purpose of bringing them to the website. This can also distract readers in a huge way.So, ensure that you leave a healthy amount of white space on your website and design everything else around it.
Conclusion:
If you are a newbie to website design or you have been in the field for long, this article applies to you. Being a website designer is a task that should be taken with the highest level of seriousness.In addition, to creativity and uniqueness, being on the right track is also very important for everyone. Join forums, search for resources, read biographies of successful website designers and you will always be up to date with current trends. It is a good thing to become a website designer and you should always strive to be better at it at all times.
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