Are you learning to design a website to contribute to your company’s online marketing strategy or simply doing it as a new hobby? Whatever your purpose may be, you will be glad to find out that learning how to design and improving your skills in website designing isn’t that difficult. In fact, website designing doesn’t need a degree. As long as you have the time, determination, and resources, you will definitely master the basics of web designing and even take it to the next level. To start with, here are some of the ways you can improve your skills in website designing.
Practice Makes Perfect
Even without any web developing or designing background, you can still be able to easily learn and enhance your web designing skills. The best thing about this generation is the availability of information. Even without attending a proper training in school, you can teach yourself through the tutorials available in the internet, especially HTML and CSS – the main languages for web designing. After you have learned the technical skills, focus on the aesthetics. Learn to recognize good designs from the bad ones. However, it’s something you will naturally learn along the way, through time and experience. Hence, keep practicing.
Ask for Feedback
The website you can make will be viewed and used not only within your company and clientele but possibly around the globe as well. Therefore, it’s best to ask people to give their comments about your website design and if there’s any particular area you should improve. You don’t necessarily have to ask international strangers online. Anyone can be a good critic of your design, as long as you reach out to people who can provide their honest opinion and are not afraid to criticize your work.
See Other Websites
Dedicate some time to view and gain ideas from some of the millions of websites online, not to plagiarize but to be inspired. Take note of how every specific information is displayed and where they are usually located. Even these small things can affect how people view your website. Avoid copying all the ideas from one website alone as your goal will be to come up with a custom web design and not an imitation of another. The website design should depend on the type of project, company, clientele, etc. Be a good critic and determine what features work and whether or not you will need them in your own website as well.
Learn from the professionals
Learning about designing theory is also important in order to come up with a perfect custom web design. Before starting to code your website, plan properly. Read books or articles online about design theory, particularly about grid theory, color theory, and typography. Those are the basics of designing, in general. As soon as you have mastered those techniques, you will have a bright future as a web designer.
Simplicity is Key
One of the most common mistakes newbie web designers make is stuffing their websites with fancy yet unnecessary functions and displays. Doing this will only make visitors, especially those who are not internet savvy, uncomfortable, intimated, or even frustrated. Learn to put white spaces in good use. Simplifying your navigation is also important as it will improve your viewer’s experience. Keep your website design yet functional and pleasing to the eye.
Learn to pick good combinations
Choosing the perfect color combinations is also imperative in website designing. You can rely solely on your designer eye or seek help from designing resources in the internet that provides color schemes and combinations. Typography is also an important area in website designing. Choosing the best font and font sizes for every area of your website will help make things stand out. While some of the pre-installed fonts in your computer may work just fine, you may also download and use custom fonts online.
Latest Trends
There’s more to web designing than simply using slideshows and carousels. Most people don’t stay long enough in one page to wait for the potentially important and relevant information you have placed on a slowly moving slideshow. Even as a new designer, aim to learn beyond the basic web designs. Pay attention to the latest trends in website designing. Most people enjoy spending time in websites that have cooler or “fresher” features. However, you don’t necessarily need to follow a trend even if you know that it has zero use in your website but paying attention to what’s popular and keeping up with the latest trends will help you in designing more websites. Nowadays, company also displays their social media links on their websites by using social media icons. Having those links is also a great way to incorporate social media marketing, the most popular marketing trend these days.
About The Author:
I am Louise J. Savoie Digital Marketer at Proweaver, a web development company specializing in Custom Web Design which helps sole proprietors and small companies increase their sales and grow their business. I am responsible in Content Marketing and Social Media Marketing.
You can find us on Twitter: @proweaver
