Web design is the process of planning the appearance and structure of a website so that it is easy to understand, easy to use, and appeals to its intended audience.
Good Design
- Makes a website easy to navigate.
- Makes the subject of a website seem credible.
- Helps visitors find useful information and complete important tasks.
- Leads visitors to take intended actions, such as signing up or buying.
- Works well and remains easy to use on different screen sizes.
Bad Design
- Makes visitors want to leave.
- Fails to serve the intended audience.
- Presents more text than visitors need before they can understand or act.
- Does not highlight intended actions.
Web Design Concerns
Colors
Colors set the mood of a website and should fit the audience, subject, and intended mood of the project. It is useful to choose a base color with variants and a contrasting accent color for important elements such as buttons. You also want to make sure that text always appears on a background with enough contrast to keep it legible.
Conventions
Websites should feel familiar. People get confused when things work differently than expected, so it’s important to understand common website conventions.
Inverted Pyramid
When presenting information, websites and individual pages or posts should usually present the most important information first, followed by supporting details. Title, summary, details. This allows visitors to quickly understand what they are looking at and then only view more if interested.
Buttons
If you want people to click buttons on a website, they have to look like buttons, be large enough to get attention, and use a clear visual treatment that distinguishes them from the rest of the site. Primary actions should use a consistent style throughout the website.
Fonts
Font choice has a surprising impact on the feel of a website. But more important than styling is legibility. Websites often use one font for headings and another for text, but they can also use one font throughout. You can get creative with the heading font. But the text font just needs to be easy to read.
Personality
Web design is how a website has personality. While some websites lean entirely on images to accomplish this, most projects need colors, fonts, accents, and layout to make the site feel unique or appropriate for the topic.