Website designing is big business these days, as just about anybody and everybody who owns a business, either wants a virtual presence and there are others who want to start their own online business.
Apart from the various design elements, tools, techniques, and strategies that a website designer must use to design a website, what is also important is to understand that successful website design is all about giving importance to the right perspectives. When it comes to designing any website for any domain, you need to keep three perspectives in mind – Your own, that is the designers’s; Your client’s; and the website visitor’s.
Alright then… lets get started…
First, Up, is the Perspective of the Designer
Your website is your baby. You need to nurture it and craft it the way you think best. As a designer, you know you are designing for a target audience, that is faceless. You identify a target audience and design a website accordingly, but more often than not a designer creates a website that is more in line with his/her thinking. The use of CSS, images, sidebars, navigation elements etc. is in tune with your own thinking. As a website designer, it will become very difficult for you to disassociate from your design and look at it objectively. After all, the design is a part of you as it is born out of your imagination. But as a designer, you need to maintain a fine balance between what you want and the purpose of the website. The concept has to be decided accordingly.
More than anything, designers love it when website visitors go “ WOW” when they come across their website and appreciate its design. Let’s face it, every designer loves to show off, irrespective of how many years he/she has spent designing websites. But as a designer, it is of paramount importance that you design keeping the objectives of the website in mind and always have one eye on the Returns on Investment.
You are being paid by the Client – The Clients Perspective
At no point can you get your client out of the picture. After all, the client is paying you good money for designing his website. More importantly, the client wants to design a website with some clearly defined goal in mind. If there was no goal nor purpose, there would be no design in the first place. So, you need to know what clients want and specifically, what they don’t want. This allows you to cater to their precise and specific requirements, which in turn allows them to get their money’s worth from your services.
A website design that cannot satisfy your clients, is an unsuccessful website, whatever be your own personal opinions about it. Let’s face it, you might love the placement of a call-to-action button on the landing page, but if the client objects to it or has his/her own idea about where he wants to place, it, you need to give way to his opinion; or if you feel so strongly about it, you will need to convince the client why he is wrong and you are right.
Finally, the one that really matters – The Users Perspective
Whatever you do, you shouldn’t forget the user. It’s the user, who will decide whether the website design will be successful or not. All your designing efforts, client centric or otherwise need to come together to persuade the website visitors to take the appropriate call-to-action. When your website is finally accessed by the visitors, the real truth will emerge, in terms of whether your skill sets and understanding of website designing as a whole have managed to impress users and hold their attention.
So, do some research of the target market and understand what they want and what is even more important is that you identify what they don’t want. Remember, that a design will only be ‘great’ if it works big time for the user. It really doesn’t matter whether your design is simple and doesn’t have striking design elements or unique navigation. All it should do is work for the users. Nothing more and definitely nothing less.
In Conclusion
Do note that these are three different perspectives pertinent to particular people, but all of them should come together for the creation of an effective website design. The website designers must achieve a three pronged balance between, what they want, what their clients want and last but not the least, what the users want.
Author Bio Hazel Raoult works with PLAVEB, a leading website design company. She loves creating unique and highly satisfying user experiences for website visitors and also loves sharing her web designing knowledge with people looking for such information. This she does through her write ups on various blogs. Find us on Facebook.