Planning Your Website

The goals of web design

To understand how to create well designed websites, it is worth understanding the

fundamentals of design. Good design creates experiences that makes people’s lives easier, and

is also aesthetically pleasing. Here are some examples: a well-designed store makes it easy for

customers to fi nd products they are looking for, or maybe even products they never knew

they wanted. Drivers can see well-designed road signs from a distance and the message of

the sign can be immediately understood, even at a high rate of speed while driving. A welldesigned chair is comfortable to sit in and also fi ts in with the style of the room.

A store, a sign, and a chair are all designed with a specifi c intent.

In all these cases, the designer took time to plan the outcome using their skill and experience,

as well as resources such as materials and available budget. Diff erent disciplines require diff erent

design tools. The web designer is often required to organize information, give it meaning, and

assemble it in a way that is visually attractive using available tools.

When designing for the web, there are some unique challenges compared to other disciplines

arising from the fact that web design is still in its infancy and is evolving rapidly. Even the

defi nition of web design is evolving and diffi cult to defi ne. Originally, web design meant

designing pages for a web browser. While this is still true, you now need to consider the

rapidly evolving nature of mobile devices, tablets, smart phones, and consumer electronics that

access the web. Some people make the distinction between mobile design and web design, but

this distinction is evaporating as mobile devices are evolving. For many web professionals, this

rapid evolution of the medium is part of what makes it such an exciting fi eld.

Although the design of websites is an evolving fi eld, designers do not need to reinvent

the wheel. Web design’s closest relative is print design, and although the two are distinctly

diff erent it is worthwhile to compare and contrast them.

The diff erence between print design and web design

Print involves seeing; the web involves doing. Books, magazines, posters, newspapers,

brochures, and advertisements all contain information, usually text and images, whose intent

is to deliver some sort of message or content to a reader. More importantly, designers often

try to build a call to action into their work that makes a customer believe there is some

action they should be taking as a result of the design.

A visually exciting movie poster’s call to action might be, “Go see this movie!”

• A political campaign displays signs with the call to action, “Vote for me!”

• An advertisement in a magazine off ering a free sample might have the call to action,

“Contact us to learn more!”

Compare a print fl yer for a shoe sale with its online counterpart. The call to action for the

print fl yer is, “Show up at the store this Saturday to buy these shoes at a discount.” The

information regarding the sale might be enough to compel the customer to get in their car

and go shoe shopping on Saturday, but the designer helps to present the information in a

way that is well organized and gets noticed. Using color, type, and perhaps an illustration or

image, the designer helps to convince the potential customer of the value of this sale.

In some sense, you could say that the print designer’s job is done when she sends the fi le

off to the printer. If the customer shows up in the store, it becomes the salesperson’s job to

complete the sale.