Web design refers to the design of websites that are displayed on the internet. It usually refers to the user experience aspects of website development rather than software development. Web design used to be focused on designing websites for desktop browsers; however, since the mid-2010s, design for mobile and tablet browsers has become ever-increasingly important.
Web Design works on the appearance, layout, and, in some cases, content of a website. Appearance, for instance, relates to the colors, font, and images used. Layout refers to how information is structured and categorized. A good web design is easy to use, aesthetically pleasing, and suits the user group and brand of the website. Many webpages are designed with a focus on simplicity, so that no extraneous information and functionality that might distract or confuse users appears. As the keystone of a web designer’s output is a site that wins and fosters the trust of the target audience, removing as many potential points of user frustration as possible is a critical consideration.
UI Design is the abbreviation for User Interface and is responsible for creating the interfaces between the user and the product and ensure that the interaction between the customer and the product is a seamless one.
First, we work alongside with every client to determine what goals the new website needs to fulfill, what its purpose is, what's the targeted audience etc.
Once we know the site's goals, we can define the scope of the project. This includes decisions like what web pages and features the site requires to fulfill the goal, and an estimation of the timeline for building those out.
With the scope well-defined, we can start digging into the sitemap, defining how the content and features we defined in scope definition will interrelate.
Now we can start creating content for the individual pages, always keeping search engine optimization (SEO) in mind to help keep pages focused on a single topic. It's vital that we have real content to work with for our next stage:
With the site architecture and some content in place, we can start working on the visual brand. Depending on the client, this may already be well-defined, but we might also be defining the visual style from the ground up. Tools like style tiles, moodboards, and element collages are part of with this process.
With all the pages and elements present, it's time to make sure it all works. Combine manual browsing of the site on a variety of devices with automated site crawlers to identify potential issues.
In case of idientified issues, we move forward with the debugging process. We study the code to determine and fix any errors that occurred.
Now, we are ready to move forward to website optimization, which is the process of using tools, advanced strategies, and experiments to improve the performance of the website.
Once everything's working beautifully, it's time to plan and execute the site launch! This should include planning both launch timing and communication strategies.
