website design
Many designers are of the opinion that a "beautiful" site design is a keystone of the site's success. However, if you want your design to work for the site efficiency, it is important to stick to some technological processes. These processes can be divided into two groups:No. 1. Creation of the site's block scheme
The site design should comply with the main aim of users' visiting (materials' reading, registration, filling in the order form, making a purchase, etc.). One of the most common mistakes in web design is "beauty for the sake of beauty". The site is looking attractive, but it is very hard for a user to find the needed information. The users are distracted by design details, confused, and, as a result, leave the site.
That's why before choosing a design solution, you should:
- determine what sections, links, images, and information will be placed on each page;
- assign the location and scale of the functional elements on the pages so that the user can easily follow the links on the site to the main target of the visit.
It is important to have a rational balance between building a travel line through the site and placing additional information eventually needed to the user in his way to the target. On the sites with a ramified structure, it is appropriate not to show all the possible helpful links on every page, but to allocate them as the user may need them on different pages.
The result of this work is creation of block schemes for every page of the future site, with indication of position and sizes of the functional elements. The main task of the block scheme creation is to bring visual position of elements and their design to compliance with the main tasks of the website.
No.2. Stylistic solution
Proceeding from a marketing concept and a block scheme, the designer starts "drawing" the website. At this stage, it is rather important to choose a stylistic concept. The principle things are here the site's color gamma, visual row (illustrations, use of recognizable logo, corporate identity, etc.), font size and colors.
Color gamma. It is common knowledge that colors and their combinations, in this or that proportion, put users to a certain mood, and this mood can either induce the user to do a desired action on the site or to repel him from doing it. It is important that the color gamma, position and size of blocks and other elements comply with the marketing concept of the site.
Object proportions. It's not a secret that our brain subconsciously determines the largest objects as the important ones. That's why the most important link on the page should be the largest one. In order to make it easy and comfortable for the user to make an order from the product's description page, the button "Order" should be the largest on the page and it should be put in the most noticeable place under the product's description. Unfortunately, there are still a lot of examples in the Network, when on the product page one is dazzled by additional links like "About company", "Contacts", and even links to the similar products, but it is hard to find the button "Buy".
Objects location. The researchers of user behavior on websites have stated some general rules of users' eye movement (i.e. of attention) through out the page. The average European starts learning the page from the upper left corner, then he moves his eyes a bit to the right and down till the page's right edge, further, he looks down and to the center and then goes up to the central or other part of the page which he identifies as the main one for him. When observing the page, the eye seizes dynamic (animated) objects, images marked with color or size. These peculiarities should be taken into account when designing a page template in order to help the user's eye to catch the information he is looking for and to urge the user to do a needed action.
Object orientation. The laws of composition building tell us that the objects may be either static or dynamic. The dynamic objects draw more attention and have the possibility to turn attention in certain direction. The eye unconsciously follows the line, moves in the direction where the acute angle points to, follows the rolling circle. The typical dynamic figures are triangle, circle, line. On the contrary, it seems like the eye stops, makes a break on static figures. Typical static figures are square, rectangle. If one is aware of these peculiarities, one could attract attention to a specific page sections and to remove distractive elements.
The ready stylistic solution is prepared in the form of a site design layout.
Design layout of the site
A design layout of the site includes, as a rule, initial graphic files (e.g., in .psd-format), design template for installation in the site's programing part and a style guide.If the work is done right, the site design is surely comprehensible and handy. As a result, the site's users will easily find the needed information and perform needed actions. See portfolio of our studio.