There’s one thing that can’t be stressed enough when building a website: The first impression really matters.
Web design is what creates the overall look and feel of a website – it deals with the user experience aspects of a website.
Table of Contents
Essentially, it is the part of website building that focuses on aesthetic factors, including layout, user interface, graphics, fonts, colors, and other visual imagery that make a website more visually appealing.
Well, now you know that website designing determines how a website looks, feels, and works on various devices, but how much does it cost? Designing a website yourself is the cheapest opinion, with average costs ranging from $100 to $3,000.
However, if you are hiring an expert web designer, you can expect to spend anywhere from $1,000 to an excess of $75,000.
If you are stuck in the process of creating a website, this post will discuss various aspects of web designing to bring you to light. Read on to know more about web design.
What is web designing? Why is it important?
As the name suggests, web designing is the process of creating websites and pages while ensuring an effective and enjoyable user experience.
It involves adjusting different elements, including organizing content, images, interactive, and functional components, to create a dynamic and user-friendly experience.
In order to create a winning design, professional web designers need to understand the target audience, the goal of the website, and the visual appeal that resonates with the audience.
That way, they will be able to choose an attractive color scheme that identifies that brand, create reasonable layouts, style the pages, optimize the websites for most devices, and arrange images, text, logos, videos, apps, and other elements for intuitive navigation.
The most interesting part is that you can create a website design without necessarily having the skills needed to create one. Whether you’re short of skills or are on a tight budget, there are plenty of free customizable templates that you can use to create your design.
Although it might be the best way to go for professionals, it is the best for beginners.
Whether you create your web design or hire a skilled designer to complete the job, the ultimate aim is to deliver a quality experience to your audience and help your business reach its goals with an intuitive web design.
Web design tips for an outstanding site
Web design is one of the most crucial factors that affect the success of a website and any business that immensely relies on websites for conversions.
Indeed, nearly half of customers judge the credibility of a company based on the design of their website. This shows how superior a web design can be.
While different people have different opinions on what a perfect website should look like, good web design shouldn’t be subjective.
Depending on the industry, the best web design should make it easy for visitors to determine what your business does, navigate to blogs when needed, and quickly understand the pricing of items, where applicable.
That said, no matter your industry, these tips will help you go in the right direction.
Keep the design simple
When it comes to website design, simple is always better and attractive.
Your website is an extension of your brand and should communicate your core message instantaneously. That’s why you should keep your design simple and clean. In fact, websites that have high prototypicality and low visual complexity are considered the most beautiful.
Although people have varying tastes, the truth is that visitors don’t like visual complexity. Again, considering that many of us don’t read every word on a website, a page that is hard to scan and doesn’t give the eyes will likely have a high bounce rate.
Ideally, you want to create a design that is simple and reflective of your business and brand. It should include colors that trigger your target audience to think about your brand while keeping important content above the fold.
To create an attractive design that reflects your business
- Surround important elements with odd space
- Space out content to make it readable and give the design a more spacious, well-balanced feel.
- Add high-quality media features to capture readers’ attention, communicate your point, and enhance aesthetics without making the page cluttered.
- Place a call-to-action strategically.
The idea is to keep your design simple, clean, minimalistic, and free of clutter.
Prioritize functionality
Web design deals with aspects that point to user experience, meaning its functionality is the most important thing. It should feed into your user experience, functionality, complement your content, and be easy to understand at first glance.
Throughout the website designing project, never forget that your website visitors will be real people. For this reason, it should be compelling and cater to the needs of audiences of multiple backgrounds, ages, and specialties.
You need to streamline navigation so that it feels intuitive and organize page categories to satisfy conflicting user expectations without overwhelming them.
After streamlining navigation, the next thing you need is to make your design responsive. As the name suggests, a responsive web design is one that adapts to the devices your website visitors are using.
It is all about optimizing for multiple screen sizes to keep all users engaged, so there is no need to zoom in to see details. In fact, while many older people think of web design in terms of desktop screens, these days, it is imperative to consider mobiles first.
This is because, in the smartphone era, people tend to use phones and tablets for browsing.
To ensure your web design is functional and attractive, all you need is to communicate what you want to your designer and give as much explanation as possible.
Use free or cheap templates when starting
When consolidating your website, you have the tough task of choosing between custom web design and web design templates. While each offers a set of unique benefits that your leverage, pre-made site skeletons are the best for beginners.
Thankfully, there are hundreds of free and cheap templates from which beginners can choose.
The most impressive thing about using web design templates is that you don’t necessarily need web designing skills. Web design templates provide beginners with a framework into which they can plug their site’s content with ease.
These templates also come with built-in functionalities, which help you save time, money, and the hassle of creating custom designs.
Another benefit of using templates is that you get customizable, professionally designed websites at a reasonable price. This allows you to create a website that appears to be fully customized, even without proper coding knowledge.
Reputable template providers also include add-ons, making it easy for you to optimize your website for search engines right from the onset.
Whether you are creating an “ordinary” website or an online store, there is something for everyone. Some templates come with add-on features to allow you to showcase your portfolio, gallery, and blogs, while others include dynamic features like online ordering, credit processing, and live chat.
Ideal for e-commerce, gambling, lending, and other complex websites.
Stay up to date with your design
After creating a simple, compelling, and user-friendly web design, you should not stop there. Your website needs regular maintenance, which involves routinely checking the website and ensuring everything is smooth and up to date.
The last thing you would want is your customers bouncing because your web design is outdated, the content on your website is inaccurate, or you still have outdated product information on your site.
Staying up to date with your website design will prevent such issues, eliminate the risk of downtime, ensure better page load speeds, prevent broken links from stacking up, and all other benefits of staying updated.
Regular maintenance and updating your design can help keep leads and customers because they are faces with a comfortable, fast, and intuitive user experience.
Where to hire designers
Getting a web design right is complex, and the complexity can vary significantly depending on the look and feel you want to create. Even if you are using a template to create a simple design, you might need the services of a professional web designer.
Working with a freelance web designer is one of the cheaper and easier ways to get the website you need. Depending on your budget and what you need, a freelance designer can customize a template or design everything from scratch if they have the skill. But where can you hire the designers?
There are many reputable freelance sites where you can find top-rated web designers to work with. Platforms like Upwork, Toptal, Fiverr, 99designs, Behance, Stack Overflow, and PeoplePerHour have some of the best web designers.
They may charge anywhere between $15 to $75 per hour, depending on several factors.
Work with a front end developer
Another way to get the web design done is working with a front-end developer to help you add elements as you go along.
A knowledgeable front-end developer will help you create a website that works – their work is to produce HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for your website or Web Application so that your site visitors open up a site that feels intuitive.
Conclusion
Creating a website design is not one of the easiest things you can do. All in all, taking a hands-on role in the process can ensure you get the website that meets your expectations and resonates with users. Hopefully, you can now come up with your dream website. Make sure to tell your web designer everything about your brand and what you want to achieve.