What Is A Website Designer: All You Need To Know
- May 4, 2022
- 7:25 am
- No Comments
There is a high chance you’ve came across either someone who works as a website designer (well you have now!) or seen the word appear online. There has been an increase of website designers over the years as a top website designer is a lucrative job that also can come with freedom but you must remember it is a highly competitive market and not everyone lives the ‘perfect’ lifestyle, it is a job that requires a lot of hardwork and dedication.
But what exactly does a website do? A website designer creates the layout, navigation and design on the website, in a much simpler explanation – they create websites and make sure they look good plus run smooth. Website designers should have a great understanding of UI (User Interface) and UX (User Experience) in order to create a website that’s natural and easy for users on the site to browse through.
The design on a website is very important, people are a lot more tech savvy then they were ten years ago and having a website with poor aesthetics can leave the user with a bad impression plus damage the reputation of the owner of the site.
Hiring a website designer can help save you money & time as they will be able to create you a site that you want without the hassle meaning you can get online with a site you can be proud to show your potential prospects.
What Tasks Does A Website Designer Do?
Throughout the day, a website designer will do a number of tasks to create a website that is going to please their clients. These tasks will be pre-planned the night before and a good web designer will have a clear idea in what they are going to do when they wake up, depending on their current workload at the time.
These are several tasks a website designer will do:
- Plan, design and layout the structure of the clients website.
- Create a navigation menu structure for website.
- Design several sample page templates.
- Create graphics in editing software such as Photoshop or Canva.
- Host websites on server.
- Purchase and register domain for clients.
- Upload pages on clients websites.
- Refresh old client websites.
- Update plug-ins.
And any more tasks throughout the day…
What Skills Does A Website Designer Need?
To become a great all-round web designer, there a certain amount of skills needed to help you not only to help improve your web design business daily but it will also make it easier dealing with clients who will be impressed about the service you provide.
Clear Communication
A web designer will need clear communication throughout the whole time with their clients from the first time they speak answering any questions they may have about working with you beforehand and how you can bring their idea to life by making the website they desire.
It’s not just communicating with a client once, getting paid and then it’s a job done. A web designer communication should never stop with any of their previous clients, you will be asked questions after the job has completed about maintaining the website if they wish to do it themselves.
Any problems arise when creating a website make sure to be upfront with them and tell them you’ll be dealing with it and if the worse happens with a deadline having to be increased, a client will appreciate it more if you don’t keep it from them and say there is a delay sorry, they will be happy you discussed it with them and likely won’t complain.
Time Management
Dealing with a few clients and a few new projects can seem overwhemling but if you take the time out to plan out your tasks throughout the day, you will fine that you can accomplish more then you think in a time-frame. Depending on if you are an owner / employee of a web design agency or a freelancer, your day schedule will be a lot different.
Freelancers are more likely to have a lesser workload as it will just be them dealing with the projects alone whereas someone in a team will have several tasks spread around as team members will have expertises in different areas of website designer.
Visual Aesthetics
One of the main principles of web design is that your website is pleasing on the eye and web designers should have an eye on being able to create a site that looks good. Visual design is often an art and a science in web design as website should not only be aesthetically good but it should work for the owner especially if it’s for a business.
There are lots of aspects that come with design such as colour pallets, font pairings, proportions and many more. It can take a while to learn how to design a great looking website that works well.
User Experience Knowledge
User experience or UX as it’s known as in short is simply the experience a user has when browsing your site. A designer will focus heavily on creating a website that has a layout that is easy to find plus navigate through and is visually pleasing to make a great experience for anyone that visits your website.
The more you focus on creating a wonderful user experience on your website, the more likely you are going to convert users into business and Google will favour sites who focus on creating an easy user experience for people.
Knowledge In Website Builders & Coding
The final skill a website designer obviously needs is extensive knowledge in how to actually build a website, there are a places you can now create a website such as WordPress which is the most popular where you can create great websites and not have to spend hours coding and it is easily manageable.
It is also good practice to know how to code to a certain degree incase you need to add some code onto your website but thanks to plug-ins such as Elementor, coding has started to die down in the website design world thanks to how far website software has improved over time.
If you are interested in becoming a web designer, there are a certain amount of ways you can learn –
- Education e.g. university, college.
- Online courses
- YouTube
- Trial & error building websites.
- Learn through a friend.