Web design refers to the design of websites that are displayed on the internet. It usually refers to the user experience aspects of website development rather than software development. Web design used to be focused on designing websites for desktop browsers; however, since the mid-2010s, design for mobile and tablet browsers has become ever-increasingly important.
Design for mobile has become an ever-increasingly important development area for website developers because of the increasing speed at which users can access the internet, and the increase in the number of users who are becoming smartphone- and tablet-dependent.
“Mobile-first” approaches to website design prioritize creating mobile-friendly websites for better user usability and performance on mobile devices.
Most mobile browsers offer a menu-bar at the top of the site to allow navigation between main sections. So it’s important that the website’s design works optimally for mobile wherever possible. In fact, desktop and tablet browsing tend to become less popular as computer technology becomes more capable.
Most marketers, or anyone who has a matter of business to discuss, will benefit from using a website builder.
Website building companies generally offer a free package as part of their package of tools. Not all of these companies offer all the features on offer, but you can get a good idea of the start from the list of offered features above. The main value for website builders is obviously in their websites. After about five minutes perusing the offering, you should have a decent sense of whether there are features lacking in your website that need to be developed. Your website must be working and display the correct information or else you won’t be drawing visitors to your website.
It’s vital that website builders have clear, well-documented, and universal guidelines for development. This will avoid conflicting decisions being made between different teams. They will also reduce the number of decisions needed to create website assets and minimize the amount of time needed for website development.
The above resources are an overview of the different processes involved in website building. Feel free to explore whether you can identify a need for a specific feature or not. Once you are aware of the types of tools available, researching them a bit more will give you a better sense of which company has the best offer and how easy it is to sign up. I hope you can use these to your advantage to ensure your website is universally and elegantly presented.
The movement from desktop to mobile quickly progressed from a transition driven by different user needs and browser support, to one driven by many money-driven business decisions. Before smartphones, it was difficult and expensive for websites to be viewed on small screens. Even now, mobile browsing remains a challenge for some users due to screen size and battery consumption. As more people are searching for information on their phones places like Wikipedia and Twitter are adapted for smaller screens to discourage mobile-based browsing habits.
The problem with mobile-first websites is that they usually take longer to load and are harder to use because you are forced to scroll instead of tap and move forward through your content. What is an article on mobile if not something to be swiped through? Not to mention editing, creating, or deleting content. A problem that would have been immediately recognizable to the founders of most major websites has now become the norm with the rise of mobile websites.
In the early days of the web, users could only browse the internet on personal computers (like PCs or Macs). Back then displaying the entire contents of a website on a single screen was considered impossible. Using a desktop browser, you had to give the website your full attention to view it. Of course, some resources like images and videos could load before the main content, but everything on the page required your full attention.
The browser alone couldn’t display the whole site. To access features like the calculator, search engine, and mail function, integration had to be added onto a separate mobile application. This was the case for common websites throughout the 90s and early 2000s, like The Washington Post, CNN, and The New York Times. Since then websites have progressed from being web pages to mobile applications.
Nowadays, new apps such as Facebook Messenger and Snapchat are being run as full-fledged mobile applications so that any smartphone would be able to run them. Apps are not only needed for a browser to function but also to be sold or used on a smartphone. I can easily imagine a user accidentally sending an email on a phone that they didn’t log into, causing large financial losses. It turns out that only a full-fledged mobile app had the the chance to do that.
As a result, the importance of user experience in website design has become higher than ever before. The responsibility of making a great mobile-friendly website was left to developers, rather than website owners. As mentioned before, there has been a shift in what design is created for mobile and what is just web design.
Many developers, designers, and management consultancies have shifted to developing tools that allow users to customize their websites to fit their particular needs, rather than acceding to browser standards. These tools tend to be user-friendly, fast, and easy to use, and they dramatically improve the user experience.
While many web design elements are created on top of HTML, there are other design elements that web designers may need to use in order to create a positive user experience.
In order for users to engage with your website effectively, you are meant to have a design that’s fully focused on the user. The greatest of all design focuses is on making your website aesthetically pleasing.
Aesthetics stimulate the senses of pleasure and delight, and in an age where many products, including furniture and clothes, are constructed with incredibly precise detail, a website is an “extravagant” part of a website.
Putting effort into make your website aesthetically pleasing makes your users feel sought after and desired.
A great way to improve your visuals is to use engaging colours, imagery, typography and layout. Good design highlights anything that is out-of-place, makes the user feel their needs are being recognized and helps them form a positive emotional association with your brand.
A lot of your website is going to be about navigation, so your website needs to work seamlessly with other websites on the internet and the devices they come with.
In any modern-day website, it’s likely that a lot of the HTML code has been implemented behind the scenes to enable responsive design to work across different devices and browser configurations — this is called “device bandwagoning,” and it very quickly becomes a design trend that is not based on strong user experience research. Poor usability results in lost sales and traffic to your website, so researching properly on the internet is a big part of web design.
A research snippet on the embedded file, where the keyword responsive design is hidden, reveals that research had found that 68% of users are “not sure” about responsive design. This shows that even users that consider responsive design to be important do not search for it on the internet, and are unaware of the considerations that go into designing a responsive site.
Furthermore, this snippet shows that websites can be responsive and not cause any issues, and vice versa: 69% of users say they are “not sure” about responsive and fluid sites. It is important things users are aware of and search for, such as responsive design, not just “futuristic” elements like fluid or responsive websites.