What Is Web Design?

What is Web Design?

Web Design is the process of putting together all the visual elements of your website.

Basically, Web Design involves arranging all the things that users see and interact with when they look at your website. 

Therefore, Web Designers focus heavily on the user experience side of things, rather than any behind-the-scenes software considerations. Their job is to make sure everything is clear and coherent. They also add your own personal sense of style and make your site look pretty and professional. 

That includes things like: 

The Site’s Appearance

Typography, images, colours, branding; all that fun stuff

The Site’s Layout

How the information on the website is structured and categorised

Sometimes, The Site’s Content

Does the site communicate what it intends to, and does it do so clearly? 

Web Design combines aesthetic and functional elements of putting a site together.  

It has to look nice and be in keeping with the brand’s identity and style. At the same time, it has to work well and be clear and easy to navigate. 

Piece of cake. Huh? 

What Do Web Designers Do? 

Designing a website is a process with a few stages. 

1. Goal Definition

Each website has a particular purpose, depending on the business behind it.

Some websites are designed to drive sales, some to inspire sign-ups, some share information, and others improve brand awareness. Some do all of these at once; it just depends on the tab you open. 

The first step is defining exactly what you want your website to do for your business. 

2. Pinpoint Target Audience

Your target audience is dependent on a lot of different things, and it can affect a lot of other things. 

For example, your target audience affects the sorts of devices people view your site on. Businesses are more likely to consistently use desktops than mobile devices. Individual customers, meanwhile, are more likely to scroll their phones at certain times of day. They’ll also want different products. 

Understanding who the website is for is therefore a crucial step two in the design process. It will affect mobile optimisation, the images you use, even down to the colours and fonts favoured by particular demographics.

3. Map It Out 

You know what they say. Good things come to those who plan efficiently. Pretty sure that’s it, anyway.

Web designers create a base for the structure and layout of the site. They use sitemaps to do this, helping them to identify missing pages and to think about how they want it to look. 

This also allows them to test the users’ experience before any coding starts. 

4. Design

Focusing on User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX), Web Designers then create a visually-appealing website. They choose the colours, fonts, and imagery to use and hone a brand identity in this way.

They’ll draw interactive mockups to show what it looks like and how it works before they send it to the developers. 

Important Considerations for Web Design

When you’re thinking about your business’s website, it’s important to consider the following: 

1. How Big Your Team Is

This will affect the efficiency and communication around your site, and what is shown on it.

2. What Your Website Budget is 

Certain types of web design are more pricey than others, and certain designers charge more than others.

3. What Technical Expertise Do You Have?

Following on, what technical expertise do you require – do you have an expert designer on board already? Oooh, get you! Or, do you need to hire someone who knows their HTML from their CSS? There are lots of options available.

What is the Difference Between a Web Designer and a Web Developer?

People often conflate these two roles, but they take control of different tasks when putting a website together. 

Ultimately, these two do share a common goal: to make this website the best it can be! But that doesn’t mean they do the same thing.

Let’s unpack. 

Web Designers are responsible for the visual aspects of a webpage. They make it look nice, and think about all the things a user can see, and interact with, when they click on a website.

Web Developers think more about the technical functionality of it. The programming, coding, and database management. Developers live where the HTMLs are (HyperText Markup Language). HTML is the language of websites: tags and attributes which come together to provide the structure of a site. 

There are two types of developers – front end and back end. 

Front end developers code the things users interact with. Without getting too technical, this involves the code that runs in users’ web browser. Without this code, the content wouldn’t appear, and people couldn’t interact with it. 

Back end developers, meanwhile, do the invisible things. They are behind-the-scenes, working on software infrastructure and database management, so that the website can secure and retrieve data. 

What is Responsive Web Design?

Think about your own interaction with websites. How much of your day-to-day scrolling happens on your laptop? How much of it happens on your phone?

Things are always changing. Phones are a big part of our day-to-day life, and often the first place we find websites. 

But a phone screen is very different from a computer screen. The way you interact with things on your phone is pretty different from how you interact with things on your computer. 

If you want to get even further into the nitty-gritty of user experience, it’s important to consider that not all desktops are the same, either. Different-sized screens, different resolutions. It all comes down to how viewers interact with a website. 

Which means it all comes down to how web designers do their thing. 

Responsive web design uses an interface which adapts to the device it’s viewed on. This means that user experience isn’t compromised by the size or shape of the screen.

Responsive design benefits everyone involved. It means hardworking designers only need to create one website per business, and it will show up looking equally pretty on all devices. 

It also means users don’t have to switch between their different devices, which is great for maintaining interest and improving retention.

Finally, it’s a powerful tool for businesses because it can improve your chances of achieving good SEO. User-friendly sites, which engage visitors and don’t have loading problems, are a favourite of the search engine judging panels. 

What’s the Difference Between Responsive and Adaptive Web Design?

Adaptive Web Design is a bit like Responsive Web Design, in that it aims to make your website suitable for a range of devices. 

However, they work differently. 

Responsive web design uses a single layout that adjusts itself as necessary. It’s dynamic and uses Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) media queries to change its vibe. 

Adaptive web design is different because it chooses the best configuration available from a series of fixed layouts available. That means you have to create multiple layouts for every device. It therefore works better for smaller sites, or for refreshing sites and re-designing. 

How can Web Design Help your Business?

Web Design can help your business in many ways. 

Accessibility

The first is by ensuring your website is quick, easy to understand and follow, and highly accessible. All of these steps are important in this day and age because—let’s face it—as a society, we have the attention spans of toddlers at a party.  Most websites we look at, it’ll be a quick in and out situation. So, you want to make a good first impression. 

First Impressions

Web Design actually all comes down to that first impression. An unappealing, outdated site is an immediate turn off. Your website affects how people view your brand. 

If you can put a good site together, people will be more inclined to believe you can deliver your product well. It looks like you care, like you’re taking the time to get to know your audience. 

All of that builds trust.

Better On-Page SEO

You might think your rankings in the search engines depend entirely on the content of what you share. But so much more feeds into it than that. 

SEO is affected by the structure of your web page as much as it is by what’s on it. When it comes to on-page SEO, search engines are looking for a well-designed, well-oiled machine. 

When your website is well-structured, and hierarchy and navigation have been considered, search engines find it much easier to understand your content. That puts you at an advantage. 

Meanwhile, user experience is key to good SEO. Google factors in whether people seem to enjoy spending time on your site. 

Also crucial to on-page SEO is page speed alongside image and meta description optimisation. Web Design can help you make the most of this. 

Competitive

Sometimes it comes down to the simple fact that everyone else is doing it. If your competitors’ sites are easy to navigate, coherent, and pretty, why would yours not be? 

You can offer just as much as them.

A competitive website drives conversions, sign-ups, and leads.

Brand Identity

Think about you, as a person. When you put on a nice outfit, what do you think about? What sort of ideas do you want to convey? 

Web Design is a bit like that. Your website helps people understand, at a glance, who you are and what you’re about. 

It’s worth putting time and energy into thinking about your brand positioning. And, if you’ve done that, why would you not show it off? Put equal time and energy into designing your site so that you can be sure you communicate exactly what you aimed to. 

A strong brand identity is crucial when it comes to customer retention and loyalty. It also builds trust which helps no-end when it comes to customer acquisition. 

User Experience

User experience is crucial, and Web Design takes place with your audience in mind. 

Without a positive user experience, you can’t expect user retention, loyalty, and conversions. 

With that in mind, web design really gets to the heart of what your business wants to do, both on a personal and logistical level.

Designers spend time on readability, navigation, mobile optimisation, simplicity, and clarity. That means it’s always clear what you want your audience to do. 

We’re all simple creatures: clear instructions please us! They make people so much more likely to click through, make purchases, and spend time with your brand. 

We're Just Like Spiders: Experts in Web Design

Unlike spiders, though, we have a manageable number of legs.

Hopefully, we’re a bit less scary, too. 

The point is: you want webs? We got webs. They’re well-designed webs. 

We’re also on hand to help. Contact Zap today to find out more about your potential website. Ooooh, it’s exciting…