company’s website is one of the most important aspects to their digital presence. It’s the first impression you give to potential customers. So if your website’s visual appeal falls short, how can you boost sales? The design of a website encompasses your branding, making it crucial in how your audience perceives your business.
The impression that you leave on visitors can either entice them to stay and explore more of your website, or cause them to leave and go to your competition. This is why effective web design is essential for retaining leads on your page.
The building blocks of web design
Crafting unique, sleek web designs involves considering various elements, including:
- Layout - The arrangement of all visual elements on the web page, including text, images and any icons or illustrations.
- Colour - Having a unique and striking colour palette with a wide variety of contrast can help entice visitors as they scroll.
- Typography - The technique of structuring letters and words to improve legibility, but bring life to the text at the same time.
- Hierarchy - This is used to give your site structure by prioritising the most important elements, effectively guiding a user’s eye gaze.
- White space - Empty space allows elements to breathe by balancing the space around them.
Web design vs development
Although similar, web design and development are different processes when creating a website. Web design deals with creating the look and feel of the website, by primarily focusing on the visual aspects and user experience.
Web development, on the other hand, focuses on the technical aspect of websites. It involves the construction and architecture, employing markup languages like HTML for structure, CSS for styling, and JavaScript for interactive functionalities.
In essence, while web design focuses on the way your website looks, web development focuses on making it fully-functional and operational. Both aspects are crucial for creating a successful and effective website.
Responsive web design
It’s hard not to see someone with their phone in their hand in this day an age. It’s therefore important to ensure that your website is responsive and renders well on a variety of devices and window screen sizes. This is what responsive design does.