Having a website for your businesses is essential. However, it’s also critical to have a good web design to ensure that your site is crafted nicely for your visitors. The main ingredients for a great website should include an easy navigation, clear description of your company and appropriate contents. The main factors play a significant role in attracting visitors to your site and ensuring they stay on your site. The more people stay on your site, the more they are likely to be interested in what you have to offer. Traffic can also potentially convert into sales.

Website owners will have more opportunities and benefits when they have a good web design. To help improve your site, follow our tips below.

Plan

Every project begins with a plan. For businesses, the primary goal is to ensure visitors can navigate through your site and your store smoothly. Before jumping into designing, make sure that you map out a plan of the overall view of your site.

Social share

Social media share buttons are now on trend. It helps drive more traffic to your website when a visitor share content from your site. Ensure the buttons are relatively visible as this will encourage social sharing from users.

Offerings

Offerings are quite similar with to hosting a giveaway on a social media page. You could offer the users something unique and related to your business in exchange for their email address. It could be as simple as providing a free pdf guide of something you offer or something similar. Most website owners are now applying this method to their website. To ensure you stand out, find something unique to offer.

Remove unnecessary elements

Some contents or elements may need to be removed to ensure the site is not too complicated. Animations can make a website look unprofessional and may even slow down your loading page. It’s also vital that your contents can grab the attention of your readers. Contents that are low quality are more likely to push readers away from your site.

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When browsing for hosting services, you will find that there are hundreds of companies that offer different deals on hosting packages. So it can be daunting to decide on which company to go for. It is even harder to choose if you aren’t familiar with the hosting terms that you’ll find in their packages. So to help you choose the right company and determine what you need from a hosting package, we’ve gathered the following terms to help you understand what you need.

Shared or Dedicated

A shared hosting means that you are sharing a server with some other people who are on the same hosting as you are. Whereas a dedicated hosting means you have your hosting on a single server that isn’t shared with anyone. That’s why shared are much cheaper than a dedicated server. The downside of a shared hosting is that it may affect your website’s performance as you are sharing with other people.

Traffic

Traffic is the number of visitors that you are expecting to visit your website. They are also known as bandwidth.  It’s important to know how much visitors you are expecting on your website so that can choose a package that suits your needs.

File Usage Limits

How much files you can use for your website. If you are looking to create a website with plenty of contents, it’s ideal to consider an unlimited package to ensure that you do not go over your usage limits.

Email

Find out how many email accounts you require as different packages are limited to a number of email account you can create.

Customer Support

An excellent hosting provider should be able to provide you support 24/7 either by phone, email or chat. You can also check out their online reviews from their customer. Most companies should have a knowledge base and faqs support on their website.

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How can I decide who to work with?

It’s important not to be immediately taken in with the first company you consider. Many web hosting companies, designers, marketing agencies and so on will prioritise having a flashy website, but that does not necessarily reflect the level of service offered.

Check for past work of theirs and follow up on recommendations before enquiring, and then try to arrange a transparent discussion about what they can offer you given your budget and any other restraints.

How much should I spend?

This will vary depending on your project, but if you want to create a professional website for your business, it’s likely that you will need to spend around £1,000 on design. Web hosting, domain name registration and so on are typically much cheaper than that, but remember they are an ongoing cost which must be managed and budgeted for.

Where will my website content come from?

Usually, the writing and images used on your site will be provided by yourself. Web designers are not going to be familiar enough with your company to produce these without help, and they certainly wouldn’t include these services for free. You may be able to pay extra to have content created for you, but it’s good value if you can handle it in-house.

What do I need to know when the website is done?

Once your web design is complete, you need to establish whether your relationship with the design agency is effectively over, or whether they will continue to support you later. Ideally you should have full access and control over every aspect of your website, so steer clear of companies who would retain ownership of the site once it has been completed. You should at least know the basics of how to update and manage your website, or have someone in-house with this expertise.

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Having the pressure of finishing a project on time shows how stressful and this job can be. So we’ve come up with some tips and tricks that can help web designers save time and get faster at work. Following the tips will help you meet deadlines while still delivering a quality work.

Tips and Tricks

Organise correctly – It is important that your files are named and labelled in separate documents for each of your projects. Therefore it will be easier when you need to make any future changes.

Grid Systems – When using Photoshop, it is ideal to take advantage of the grid systems. Using this feature can easily save you a lot of time in the process of designing.

Organise Layers – It’s advisable to label your layers and organise each of them into a folder. It allows quick navigation or movement for each group.

Shortcuts – Web designers should always use the keyboard shortcuts as they are great for saving time. Designers can even personalise the shortcuts to their needs to fit their designing process.

Masking Images – By masking the folder with images, it will help you save time on cropping, sizing or styling a particular image, especially if all images needs to be in the same size or style.

Customise applications – Adobe allows all users to create and customises their design applications to suit their preference or needs.

To end, applying the tips can easily save time and make the work process go smoothly and faster for web designers.

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What is creative web design? They websites that still contain the necessary information and functionality but with an added artistic touch on presentation. The design will more likely catch the attention of many users.

Hiring a creative web design company over a traditional web company will benefit you more. Mainly due to a more appealing image compare to your competitors. Especially today, many customers are more attracted to a modern and unique design on the web.

Growth

About ten years ago, the demand for web services was at its highest peak. Most of the company, however, had little experience on the traditional side of the web design. This includes the functionality, SEO and compatibility. They didn’t realise that the design and functionality both work hand in hand. Soon enough, most companies found that it is essential to have a designer and a developer work together.  The designer will plan the look of the web while the developer’s job is to apply it using the web formats.

Traditional Web Design

A traditional web design company only showcases the relevant information and functionality needed for the website to run correctly. Traditional does not focus on the image and design of the overall site.

Creative vs. Traditional

To compare both designs, we will use a billboard as an example. Imagine an advertisement with a few images with an added graphic and a matching theme. Now compare the billboard with the one next to it that contains only a number and a name. On comparison, you will soon realise that the creative billboard with images is more eye-catching than the other one.

Choosing a creative web design company

When finding the right company, be sure to check up on their design, implementation, portfolio, reliability, cost and the quality of their services. A company should be able to meet all your needs and build a creative web design that best suits you.

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Traffic – Do you know how many visitors you will be getting per day, or per month? It’s important to be realistic here, as a higher level package will definitely come at a higher cost, but it will give your site the capacity to deal with high levels of traffic with sudden increases. Cheap web hosting packages will support lower numbers of visitors, but still offer enough support for most sites.

Location – To optimise the loading speed of your website and its ability to handle high levels of traffic, you will need the server (where your site is hosted) to be geographically close to your users. If they are all likely to be from one country, ensure the server is located there. Your choice of country may also depend on laws regarding data protection and other legal issues that could affect your website.

Software – Depending on what programs and systems your website will require to function, your choice of free web hosting package could change. Some content management systems (or CMS, commonly used as user-friendly frameworks for websites) will be better suited to certain servers, depending on how demanding they are.

Security – You always need to factor in security when it comes to your personal or business information, so it will always apply to web hosting no matter what your objectives are. Shared web hosting is the cheapest type but also the most vulnerable to attack. More expensive options may be a lot more secure, so you need to understand and quantify the risk involved.

Price – For a large proportion of people, this may be the most important factor, but it has to be stacked up against everything else for you to make a wise choice. Not only do different web hosting providers offer different features, but you may be enticed in with attractive introductory offers but fall victim to hidden costs later. Do your research to confirm what constitutes good value for money once you know your requirements.

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The first and most vital thing you must do is get an applicable software for web design. Older softwares were very involved, but today’s web design software is highly advanced and very visual. Most have what is called ‘What you see is what you get’ interface. This means that most functions can be made as simply as Microsoft Office applications. Many features can be implemented using simple drag and drop functions. Some more advanced features are even made easy through little ‘set-up wizards’ that will ask what you want to do in simple plain language. Such complex things as Facebook or Twitter live feeds can be implemented graphically. So what software should be used? That is largely up to the consumer, but some recommendations are WebPlus, WebEasy or Adobe’s design programs. These all allow for deep and complex web design, while still making building a website for dummies easy and quick.

The next thing to do when building a website for dummies is get a clear and defined idea. It is often helpful to do three things before beginning to build your website. The first is to play around with the software and learn what it can do. This means looking up videos on the basics. Try to make a few sample projects that will teach the basics. Bruce Lee once said “If you want to learn to swim jump into the water.” It is not enough to simply watch the program but to understand all of its functions.

Next go to other sites to get ideas. This means going to a wide variety of sites. Visit possible competitor sites, or sites that serve a similar purpose to yours. This means especially finding the most successful of these websites and seeing how well their site works. Also visit your own favorite sites, or sites you know have a good design. Figure out why you like these sites and their design. This will help you figure out what is convenient and makes content easy to find, and what is messy, over complicated and frustrating. And finally draw the site out on paper. Plan where things will go and where they will take you. Plan out many pages, especially ones that people will use frequently. Be sure to make the site memorable but keep in mind that functionality is the most important thing to a site’s success.

Finally it is time to actually start building a website for dummies. This means that all your ideas should start coming together. Any drawings you made should now be brought to life. Find out how to execute the ideas you have. Find feedback for yourself and even your competitors. If you can implement functions that your competitors do not you could start to receive traffic that they are losing from not implementing such functions into their own site. While learning from other sites is important also keep in mind that your site should be unique. This means implementing features that will keep traffic coming back. Do not rush the work and ensure that the site actually works the way you want. Have friends go through it with no extra knowledge and see if they can work it easily. This is essentially what should be considered when building a website for dummies.

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However if you want people to pay attention to the site and respect it, it is also important to make it look attractive, as well. This is where a web design career becomes difficult, or at least complicated. How does one balance a page’s aesthetic appeal with usability? Years of training go into this, as well as having the natural ability to think creatively and also work with software that is constantly updating.

First is to work with the software pre-training. This is best for people aspiring to become web designers. Before you have a chance to start your real training learn some of the basics. One trying to get into a web design career could start by learning some of the basics of HTML. While this knowledge may not be directly used in modern projects it can be an essential tool for anyone with a web design career to know. It is much like learning the basics of any language.

Understanding how to use HTML is the first step in web design. Next play around with whatever modern editor you can get your hands on. Learning on a variety of softwares is good, especially when this includes the software used by professionals. Perhaps try a few sample projects from online tutorials, or ‘fun projects’ just for the practice.

Next is to get formal training. This means finding a certification or degree program that covers web design. Be sure to get a certification or program that is specific to web design. From here you must take the path that most professionals take, which is internship. This will entail working with existing web designers in order to learn even more about web design, which especially includes learning how to work in a real life web design office, with all the complications that come along with that.

There is an alternative to all of this formal training however. This is self-training, and is a faster, but less ‘safe’ path for those hoping to begin a web design career. This entails entirely self-taught web design skills. You will not likely be able to find an actual job as a web designer at first. When comparing your resume to others who have certifications, yours will seem quite lacking. Thus you must build it by working in other areas such as marketing or administration where you will have web design responsibilities.

It is notable that these are not really equal paths in getting into a web design career. While it is possible to be an excellent and very hirable self-taught designer, it is unlikely. Often this is done when people have already started in one area and then change into web design, usually still with a focus on their original field. A real certification program will always be the best way to get into a web design career.

There are 3 levels of web design careers. First is a junior designer. This is the lowest level of graduated designer, and is the title given to designers from the time they leave school up until their third year of work. From here you become a ‘real’ web designer. This is the full-fledged job with individual projects. Finally, there is the senior web designer, who will be in charge of large teams of designers and will train junior designers. Of course, each promotion will bring more money than the previous one, starting at about $21 an hour for a junior designer and ending at about $36 an hour at median for a senior designer.

A web design career is a lucrative and rewarding one. But in this same way it is a demanding one, with training, talent and creativity all being important considerations.

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The first ‘career level’ is that of a junior web designer. This category of web designer is defined as having three or fewer years of experience out of school. These sorts of people can only work under supervision of other higher up designers in a company setting. This means they are paid the least. But don’t let that fool you; it is still a good wage.

The median salary is $42,000 per annum for a junior designer. This can also be expressed as $21 per hour. But once again ‘how much do web designers make’ is not a simple question. Next bonuses and commissions account for maybe another $3,000. This means that a total beginner’s salary of about $45,000 is the average for a junior designer.

Next up is the lead designer. These are the next step up, having spent time as a junior designer and having several years of experience.  of experience are designers. This means that they are capable and experienced enough to be working on independent projects or aspects of projects with larger teams. Here the pay goes up. The average paycheck now rises to $52,000 a year or $26 per hour. And of course the bonuses and commissions still apply adding another $3000 estimated to their paycheck. A total pay comes out to about $55,000 per each year.

Finally is the highest of the designers, the senior designer or art director and the most impressive answer to ‘how much do web designers make’. The senior designer is the most experienced of designers. This means that they have worked long enough and have an extensive enough portfolio that they can be trusted with being in charge of large teams of other web designers. This also usually means training junior designers. All this is sure to bring in the highest paycheck. The median falls in at $72,000 a year or $36 per hour. The bonuses are also higher at $5000 making a total median estimate of $77,000 a year. In addition to this other fees are estimated to add up to another $2,200, meaning that it could be said that it is as high as $79,200.

It is also worth mentioning that it of course also depends on the company that a designer works for. Some companies will pay more highly than others. Companies that are larger will likely pay more especially to higher positions in order to keep the best designers available for important projects.

A last consideration on ‘how much do web designers make’ is figuring out how much a freelance web designer will make. This is the most subjective, as the prices can vary wildly. A freelance web designer just starting out could be the cheapest option for many clients and thus be paid less than the usual designer in an attempt to remain competitive and build a strong portfolio. And conversely, a very experienced freelance web designer may ask for far more. It is possible that this could also be the source of the most highly paid web designer, all depending on the case.

When considering how much do web designers make it is important to consider all the factors. It can be difficult to predict, but a general medians can be used to try and figure out how much a web designer can be expected to make and the answer is at all levels it really is quite a lucrative career.

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