Everything we do has its rules, and web design is not an exception. Some simple moments have to be known by everyone who works in this domain.
At the beginning of creating your web page, answer to a simple question: “Why am I doing this?” Because a site without a clear and well-defined purpose launch a message unconvincing and dull.
The visitor will ask, no doubt, "What serves this site? And if doesn’t satisfy his needs will rush to leave it.
If we take a look at all pages/sites, we can see that they are not made just to be on web. Everything must have a purpose. Every single part and element must help users achieve their goals and support the site's goals.
What means success in web design?
Success isn’t just professional skills, each of us can learn the basic elements of web design but not all will achieve the level of a “good site”. But for having a really great web page everything must be in a perfect combination.
Success is a result of good thinking plus some hard work, in which everything goes perfect with the site’s goal. This is what I call “golden rule”. All the elements from your web site must have well defined purpose. It must either guide the visitors to achieve their goals, or support the site’s purpose without forgetting the visitor’s goals.
Every single step of the process applied in accordance with the principle of Golden Rule will make a result that can bring you the success.
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If you ask yourself “why we need a simpler site?” The reason is very simple. The user reaches the site and not just finds what you give.
A simple web design has much more benefits to visitors, clients and even for designers. A quality web design combine graphics and images to highlight what is truly important in a website: content.
A simple design must be, first of all, effective, which does not distract the visitor from what it should see: your offer. The time page loading should be very small so that the visitor does not wait for loading a photo or graphic element.
What are the advantages of a simple design?
Primary the Internet develops with a vigorous and amazing speed. So the visitor or users have to enjoy a high offer exposure to a platform that is easy to understand, especially easy to interact.
There are many benefits of simple design. The pages load faster for users. The content can be read faster and quicker responsive, at the same time much easier to be scanned by client eyes.
At the same time we can’t forget about your own commercial benefits. You can get more profit by making a quicker design or redesign. And it is easier to maintain and make work on different platforms and browsers.
Remember some rules for simple design.
If at first sign seems easy to design simply, then in reality is more sophisticated. It takes lot of skills, practice and clear vision. How can I get the practice in designing simply?
1. Keep your goals fresh in your mind! Don’t forget sometimes to get a break, when you’ll come back refreshed the work will have a new look.
2. First think and then do. Trust yourself completely, and let your mind work for you. Don’t be afraid to experiment with the tools, but don’t exaggerate with it.
3. What is more - is viewless! Too many images, elements or text will make the visitors lost and confused.
4. Be short and concrete. Let the content jump in user’s eyes. The visitors always will return to the page where they found fast the information they needed.
Most of all, simplicity in design can save your time and money. Or, rather it finds room in a budget for thinking creatively about the real design problems, which is where you can discover the solutions that deliver true competitive advantage.
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In our day, when the rush after profit is so big, most of the times we don't observe all the mistakes made over and over again. In this article I identified the top five web mistakes that can reduce a website's effectiveness as well as its long-term growth prospects, and provides useful hints how to avoid them.
- Not mention what is your domain!
The most obvious problem I usually see in a home page is the absence of description exactly what the site deals with. This usually means just saying What You Do. One of the essential factors here is what I call “precision”. How easily someone visiting your site/page for the first time can understand what the deal is, and if they're in the right place.
First impression is the most critically valuable. If someone has enjoyed it, s/he recommends it to 3 people, but if not, s/he will say 10 people still in. Don't ever bother welcoming anyone to your web site. That goes without saying.
Whenever we visit a new web page, we always have this question in our mind: “Am I in the right place? For avoiding an unacceptable situation you must use the most basic design techniques. First is a good position, secondly use a visible size of the most important and at last, don't forget about the strong contrast of what they need to know.
Web site's first job is to answer that question, whether positively or negatively.
How to Say What You Do
It is really simple to explain what you deal with. You just mention 3 important moments:
- What your company/service is
- What you do
- For whom
So a good intro might be: “RT Design Studio is a professional and a really great team that creates web designs, and provides its clients with products of the highest quality standards, in the shortest deadlines.”
- Incredible Graphics
We've all been to web sites that rely on a big splash of stock photography or graphics trying to make an incredible first impression, but the effect doesn't quite happen. This is what I mean by “Incredible Graphics”.
I think that using the graphics correctly, you can catch the eyes and convey your messages in the best way. Don't exaggerate with the text, it has to communicate information very quickly and accurately. Imagery, too, can import a rich combination of “soft” info, or a high-level of complex info in the form of a graph, chart, or diagram.
The selection of imagery has to be credible. For example, don't use pictures that are not representative for your business, the information given by images have to correspond to reality, or at least to your domain of work.
- Bad Production
I have to say that shoddy production technique is one of the biggest factors that can impact your home page's success rate. So a home page should have a high content-to-markup ratio, have well-written title and meta-description tags, and feature the most relevant content high up in the source.
Use of inline styling, tables for layout, lack of separation of style and code from markup, and heavy non-semantic HTML can all be detrimental to the probability that a visitor will proceed further into the site.
A poorly-produced page will also:
- be slower to load
- translate less successfully to other media (like mobile devices)
- be less accessible to people with disabilities such as screen readers or magnifiers
- be more costly to edit and re-design over time
- Give them what they want!
Remember that a home page should focus on what the visitor is interested in, not what you're interested in.
When someone visits your site, he is trying to find out if he is going to get what he needs. Of course, all web sites have their own goals, but the best way to achieve those is by helping its visitors achieve theirs. The better you do that, the more people will come back to your site, and recommend your site to others.
The most successful web sites find win solutions, keeping people on the site by giving them what they want long enough for the site to get what it wants.
- The Dead Space.
“The Dead Space” is what you build for your visitors that have nothing in them!
Usually it goes like: “Under Construction” or “Coming Soon” placeholder. Whenever you see one of these you think “This site isn't finished, so I'm unlikely to get what I want here!” OK, so it only took a few years for web designers and owners to realize this was dumb and pointless.
No News is Not Necessarily Good News. My favorite modern Dead Pit trap is the Empty News Section variant. If you don't have a lot of News to give, it's far better to show just a few items on your home page than to create a section with not a lot in. |
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 What I like the most about web design is that there's always plenty to learn, regardless of how experienced you are. To become a better designer you have to appreciate the fact, that are seemingly unlimited resources available to you. Each of us needs to take our own unique approach to personal development that works for us.
The design community is filled with sources of inspiration and helpful sites for encouraging growth in abilities. I'd like to share with some information that works well for us. I hope that some of it will be applicable for you as well.
Tips for Learning from Other Designers
The online community of designers truly is a big community, where we can learn from talented individuals who are willing to provide some of there experience. All of us have our own unique strengths and weaknesses as designers, which makes it easy and convenient to give and take.
It's not the case where the most experienced have nothing to learn or no one to learn from.
Improving your skills can come in a few different forms. You could pick up a book, follow online tutorials, look at inspiring examples from other designers, accept a challenging project, or just play around and experiment on your own. But, the most effective way is to mix it up and learn in a few different ways.
Ask Questions
Having a network of other skilled designers can be very handy when you need some help. Many designers are willing to help, you just have to ask (and it helps to have an existing relationship).
You can also take advantage of forums that are available for this purpose. If you don’t have an existing network of designers, start to get out an meet new people, whether it’s online or off.
Read Books
Many of us spend so much time online that we forget of the more traditional resources that are available. There are some excellent books on design on just about any subject you need help with. This is one method that I like the most!
Bookmark Designs for Inspiration
Those of us who read design-focused blogs and/or visit design galleries constantly come across designs and examples of work form other designers that can inspire us in our own work. With no system to keep track of these items, you may remember one of them but have no way to get back to it when you need it. A bookmark manager like Del.icio.us is an excellent solution for this problem.
The other thing that I’ve learnt about being in contact with other designers is just how welcoming and sharing this industry is, it’s brilliant!
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If you're first starting out as a freelance Web Designer, you need to think about how much you're going to charge, and how exactly you'll charge. A lot of people have different methods for coming up with their prices, but this is just to get you started. This guide only deals with charging per project. There are other ways of charging clients, but the easiest and perhaps the most widespread method of pricing is per project.
Before you quote a price, you need to take a few things into consideration: first of all, you need to determine what your web design project will contain.
- How many pages will need to be created?
- Are there images and/or design that need to be used, or will they be created as part of the project?
- Is there content for the site, or will that be written by the designer?
- Will there be any Flash, multimedia, programming or scripting required?
- When do your clients want the project completed? The more urgent a project is, the more you can generally charge.
- How much experience do you have? The more Web design experience you have, the more you can charge. Keep in mind, however that if you don't have a lot of Flash experience and that's what your clients want, you shouldn't rely on your six years of HTML coding to increase your prices.
- How much do you want to make?
For example, you might have a project you would love to do, because it would be fun, or interesting or challenging. Your bid might reflect that. On the other hand, you might feel uncomfortable doing a job or would have to do extra work just to complete it, such as if you would have to hire a database programmer to complete the project.
These steps should give you a great start in developing your own freelance pricing guide. You can change pretty much everything in this to work for your needs. These formulas are very simple and very flexible.
One of the advantages, besides the obvious of having a pre-determined pricing guide is that you can change it on the fly.
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