On a daily basis, we are exposed to different things displayed on the internet. When we read stories on our Facebook newsfeed, most of the time, we keep on scrolling because the website meets our demands as a user. When we check out ideas on Instagram, we stay on the website because of its excellent and clean-looking appearance, layout, and content.
In this digital age, answering the question “what is web design?” is much easier due to our exposure to the internet. We go for websites that are easy to navigate and comprehend. In terms of aesthetics, we want something that is pleasing to the eye. We do not want to visit a website that would add to the stress that we are currently suffering from life’s hustles.
If you do care for these things that make you stay and enjoy your experience, did you know that you are actually delving into this respected discipline? All the aspects of user experience of website development are under the big umbrella of web design.
Want to know what is web design and all its specifics? It is important to dig deeper about web designing, the importance of web design, the characteristics of a website that undergone rigorous web designing, the things that do not work with and in web design, and how to get the fundamentals of web design right with the help of a free website builder.
Let us start by going back to basics!
What is Web Design?
Sure, you often see it online, but do you really know what is web design? In a nutshell, web design is a holistic process that is followed by a web designer to create an excellent website that matches the users’ needs.
Instead of focusing on software development alone, it is important to note that web design refers to the overall user experience aspects of website development.
To look at the elements closely, the appearance refers to the color palette, font families, and photographs used for a web design. The layout is how the content is structured, categorized, and organized to align with the appearance of a website. If these elements are executed excellently, a good web design is possible.
Image taken from Strikingly user website
In this day and age of digital transformation, web design even goes beyond aesthetics; now, it even covers the overall functionality and features of a website. This is the reason why web designing does not only cover desktop browsers but also mobile and tablet browsers.
Web apps, mobile applications, and user interface design are some of the top inclusions in web design. Web design has numerous components that need to work hand-in-hand to guarantee a finished experience: graphics, user experience design, interface design, search engine optimization (SEO), and content.
To clear out any confusion about two seemingly interchangeable terms, web design is not the same as web development. However, when you are building a website, you need both web design and web development to make things work.
Web Design is a Must
What is web design for simple web users like you? With the given definitions of what is a web design, it is evident how important it is for someone like you who is eyeing to create an excellent website for your brand.
When you have a knack for web designing, it will surely create a good impression for your audience. With just a snap-on of their devices, they will judge and evaluate your brand within seconds. And, of course, you want to connect positively with these people, so you do not want to have a mediocre web design. This sets the initial impression for customer service, too.
Did you also know that when you have an excellent web design, it affects how search engine spiders crawl and index your website? Because you land on the top of the search engines, this establishes trust among your target audience. Why? The answer is simple: people will never trust websites with poor web design.
It is also important to note that web designing is a must because your competitors are doing it. The call of the times is for you to keep up or even go ahead of your competition. To do that, you must use web design for your website!
To wrap the things that prove why web design is important, consistency is key! With a great web design, you build up your brand very strongly. With excellent web designing skills, you can easily establish a brand recall among your audience.
What is web design for professional website owners? For them, it’s a combination of aesthetics and function. This is what you need to remember about web design: online web designs are important because they establish your brand’s consistency across your page.
What Makes a Good Website Design?
There is no such thing as subjective web design. Unlike any other collaterals and outputs that require design, such as shirt designs, page design, etc., web design defines the line between what is good and what is not good.
Convert means getting the user to take a specific action. Applying it in web designing, when your web design works excellently, it converts. This can only be possible when you take the time to refine your web design.
As a result, users will be prompted to do acts of conversion such as signing up for your newsletter, subscribing to your account, making a purchase, or accessing more content provided on your website.
There are different elements that need to be together to promote conversions on your web design, and these are the things that you need to take a closer look at. Do you now know what is web design? To exemplify these elements, here are some of the sites created on Strikingly that put together different elements to come up with an excellent web design.
• Greenfield Japan
Image taken from Strikingly user website
This site compellingly made use of negative space in web designing to artistically highlight the name of the website. This is a common move in web design because it does not only help the brand but also improves the user experience by its easy navigation and clean style.
Aside from that, it is also evident in the web design how the designer presented options for the users in a clear manner. This is advantageous for the audience because the fewer options they have, the less likely it that they will be overwhelmed or confused.
• Hope Shop
Image taken from Strikingly user website
What makes the Hope Shop site very responsive is its obvious and clear calls to action. This is imperative for every web design. This will help you elicit conversion from your users, but this will also benefit them as they will not find a hard time using or navigating your website.
Now that you’ve answered the questions what is web design, it’s easy to see that Hope Shop has great website content which maximized the benefits of having limited distractions to improve the user journey. The website used a very iconic photo that speaks a lot about the site’s brand and line works.
As a website designer, you need to take into consideration how you will convey the message to your audience. Hope Shop utilized relevant subjects as features of their page, featuring relevant buttons and desired actions for the users.
From the given examples, you also need to aim for a responsive design. This means that your design resizes and reorients itself to fit with the users’ screen, depending on what device they are using (i.e. phone, tablet, laptop, or desktop browser).
• Sook
Image taken from Strikingly user website
What is web design if it isn’t the integration of aesthetics with function? Aside from its clean-looking layout, this site used appropriately sized typography to create a sense of hierarchy. This helps the users or readers on what needs to be prioritized. This is also advantageous because it saves their time; the website already suggests what should be the first thing to be read in an implicit manner.
It is also manifested how Sook, instead of using images to hook readers attention, provided a relevant and high-quality video to give an overview for users who do not have the gift of time to read their content.
You already have a grasp on what makes up an excellent responsive web design, it is important to re-echo how these elements work altogether. As much as possible, you need to monitor if all these are evident in your web designing endeavor. If not, it is high time to step up the game by revisiting and refining all sections that need a makeover.
Other building blocks of an effective and excellent web design are the buttons, font families, color palette, and the visual harmony of the images, videos, and text on your website. Now, let us talk about what does not work with web design and why you need to avoid it!
What Does Not Work in Web Design?
First things first, let it be a universal rule for web designers like you that you should not compel your users to do any work just to navigate or experience your website. Your audience should, at the maximum, enjoy all things that they can enjoy on your web design.
This is the reason why you are compelled, as someone who is in the process of web designing, to create a website experience that is comprehensive, straightforward, and intuitive. There should be clear and concise calls to action; high contrast fonts are smart and effective web design. All these features can support the answers to what is web design. But, you must also learn how to apply them in real life.
Other things that you need to avoid are the use of distracting images or videos. The primary functions of these high-quality photos and videos are to complement the text on your web design and not the other way around. If your informative text will not be read because of your distracting media, your web design needs revisiting.
Moreover, you may also want to get away from these generic and irrelevant stock photos and filler text. This is a sign that you need to have excellent photographs and quality content to heighten your web design.
Making Web Design Right
Image taken from Strikingly product
With all these things, truly, answering what is web design is a complex process. There are really a lot of things to consider. There is a lot of macro and microelements that you need to look out for. Good thing that web design is not something that you have to do by yourself! With Strikingly, you can do all these things like a professional web designer!
Strikingly provides wide-ranging options of designs that best fit the brand or style that you are looking for on your web design. From these selections, you can customize an existing template or design a completely fresh template for your web design interests.
Stepping up your web design endeavor with a free website builder like Strikingly will be advantageous for you because you will be more hands-on about the things that you want to include in your web design. The platform also gives you the freedom to play with your interests and mix up styles to come up with a better web design for your next site!
Going back to the question, “what is web design?”. You see, web design is truly a complex process, but it is something workable. Now that you are already geared with the right amount of knowledge about the fundamentals of web design, you can now proceed to Strikingly to apply what you have learned. Bring out your creative web designing skills with Strikingly today!
