The Five Stages of Good Web Design
Whether you’re looking to make the world of digital marketing more user-friendly or simply want your company’s website to look better, a good web design is critical. In fact, it’s become more important than ever to understand web design principles and implement them consistently.
Web design is a fast-changing field, with new tools and solutions coming out all the time. This is great, but it also means that websites need to be updated regularly to keep up. That’s why it’s so important to have a strong web maintenance plan in place.
If a website isn’t up-to-date, it can be confusing for visitors and may even slow down the site’s speed. To avoid these problems, it’s essential to have a solid web design process that includes a team of experts in the fields of web development, copywriting, and visual design. At Tiller, our web design process can be broken down into five stages: Strategy and planning – creating a clear plan for your website’s goals and requirements, including wireframes or prototypes that depict the user journey. Copywriting – getting copy written early in the process promotes alignment and collaboration between copywriters and designers, which results in clear and effective storytelling. Visual design – making decisions about color, layout, and visual hierarchy. This includes choosing the best fonts, sizes, and styles for your site, as well as selecting and arranging images that support your brand story.
Navigation – structuring your content so that it’s easy for users to find what they need. This includes establishing page structure, defining the navigation menu and sidebar, and organizing your pages into meaningful categories.
The visual hierarchy of a website is the order in which a visitor perceives its elements. It’s often based on the principle of the “squeaky wheel gets the grease,” with more important parts of your website getting more prominently displayed than less important ones. It’s also based on the laws of perceptual psychology, like the Golden Ratio and the Fibonacci sequence, which use proportions that are believed to be aesthetically pleasing.
A website’s usability is its most important aspect. If a visitor can’t figure out how to navigate or find the information they need, it doesn’t matter how beautiful the site is. This is why usability and user-centric design are becoming standard approaches for successful and profitable websites.
This is why it’s so important to have standardized web design components and layouts, so that users can intuitively understand how they work. It’s also why we don’t recommend trying to be too creative or unique with your web design; it can confuse and distract users from finding the information they need.