Insights / Website
In a world driven by technology and everything ‘digital’, it’s no secret that websites have played a crucial role in changing the way we live our daily lives. Whether it’s getting important information about a certain topic or purchasing a specific product or service from our preferred brands, one could easily find a site that provides them with just about anything they’re looking for.
So, let’s get started by exploring what Website Design is.
What Is Website Design?
Website design refers to the production of graphics, visual content, site functionalities, and ‘user experience journey’ for a website.
Put simply:
‘It is the process of planning, conceptualizing and creating the overall look and feel of a website.’
To reach the end product, however, several components are needed to work in tandem with each other:
1. Graphic Design
Creating graphics and visuals (i.e. images, colours, layouts etc.) based on the brand identity of a business for the site.
2. User Experience (UX) Design
Creating a pleasant and memorable web experience for users on the site.
Put simply, it’s about designing the interactions a user makes on a site to feel more ‘natural’ from their perspective, so their overall experience becomes much more enjoyable when using the website.
For instance:
Image: Uniqlo Malaysia
Putting various features at the bottom of a phone screen to allow users an easy way to navigate around the site (as opposed to it being on top where they have to stretch their fingers to reach it).
3. User Interface (UI) Design
Creating attractive and user-friendly graphical interfaces for users to interact with a product, service or feature within the site.
4. Content Creation
High-quality written content that is not only informative but useful and relevant to help businesses educate and persuade users in completing an action (i.e. purchasing their best sellers or subscribing to emails for a discount).
5. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Improving the website’s ranking on search engines to bring in more traffic to the company’s individual pages or the entire website.
Alongside web development, these are five major factors that dictate whether a given site is successful or not.
However, the two terms shouldn’t be confused with one another as web design focuses on the front-end (or appearance) of a website, while development is responsible for the back-end (code) aspect that makes the site work and function as it should.
In essence, you need both web designers and developers to create a website.
2 Types of Website Design
At any given time, we’re often browsing the web through different devices (desktop, laptop, tablet or mobile phone), which means it’s common for sites to tailor and optimize their pages in such manner. Essentially, the content of a webpage has to adjust itself to the different screen sizes so it can provide users with a pleasant experience when reading and browsing the site.
To do so, there are two types of web design approaches employed to produce such results:
1. Responsive Design
This refers to creating web pages that dynamically adjust themselves to the screen size of a given device.
As shown, the site will respond to any changes in a browser’s width by adjusting its placement of the various design elements so it can better fit in the available space. A responsive website will show its content in an ‘optimal’ manner based on the available space given by your browser. If the size of the browser changes, then it will fluidly adjust the content to present itself in an ideal arrangement.
2. Adaptive Design
Like responsive design, the content in a webpage also adjusts itself to the different screen sizes.
However, the adaptive design relies on multiple fixed layout sizes instead to determine the best arrangement for your content. It does so by detecting the space available in a certain layout size before adjusting the content accordingly. For a more detailed explanation, you can click here.
In short, Website Design does not just literally refers to web page design, but instead, the whole process of creating a smooth user experience. Albeit having the option to do it by yourself or hire a freelancer, it is better to consult a website design agency to design and develop a website that better represents your brand. Take a look at “6 simple steps to build a stunning website” to comprehend how website design agencies create stunning websites.
