As digital technology has continued to become more complex and purposeful, the web designer’s job has changed quite a bit. There is a lot more involved in creating a viable Austin website design that efficiently achieves its goals than ever before. Optimization is a huge element in website success, although it is by far not the only one. Designers wishing to create successful websites must take many other important aspects into account and blend them together for desired results.
Understanding Client Needs
In the not too distant past, designers really didn’t have to know a lot about a client – all they had to know was how to create a visually appealing web page that looked better than the competition. Didn’t matter if it was hard to use, didn’t matter if it helped users or web spiders find it when searching in the big search engines in the sky – it just had to make that designer look like one awesome dude.
Well, I do hope that this aspect IS in the past history of web design, although I am not totally convinced that it is at all. I still see too many web pages that look great – and you cannot find one blooming thing on it! It takes 5 or 6 clicks to get to a product page – and then there is not a clear path to make a purchase. Is this understanding the client who actually wants to SELL the product? I don’t think so.
The fact remains, creating a website using optimization and being user-friendly requires knowing a whole lot about a client – their goals, the path they want to travel to get to those goals, how many locations that have to sell the product – that is just a few of the many client aspects that a designer needs to know. The better a designer knows the client’s business, the better the results can be with an Austin website design project.
Understanding Usability
A website is worthless if no one can figure out how to use it – or it takes too long to go from Point A to Point B. Combining design appeal and appearance with being able to find what you’re looking for is the real skill in building effective websites – and not every Austin website design professional understands that fact. A designer who can produce a visually attractive design and make all functioning aspects work well, both for SEO and user-experience, has the right idea.
To get it right, a designer must remember that all parts of a website are interactive and affect each other. Yes, current web design should be appealing; however, it MUST be simple enough for almost any user to navigate and interpret. A web page that looks good but ignores basic SEO features will affect ranking results – and it won’t even matter how great that page looks – because no one will be looking at it! Navigation labels, URLs and other links must be easy to find and consistent to make both optimization and navigation easier.
Website Accessibility
Does your Austin website design firm create a website that is accessible on any device – mobile or otherwise? If not, your website is useless and lost in the Dark Ages of internet use. A good design must look good on all mobile platforms, no matter the size or type. That is now the standard and definitely not the exception – designers, you must get on board the accessibility band wagon! Responsive design allows accession on multiple size devices and is the ruling force – period!
The above three points must be understood to achieve effective Austin website design – anything less will leave a website unreachable, unusable, and unknown – is that what you want for your website? Only you can answer that question – think about it!